LIBRARY 

V  OF   THK 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

GIKT  OF" 


.......      ;  .. 

Received        L^-tZsi^  ,  ,189*7. 

Accession  No.&lf.f/g  .       C/^s  No. 


m 
• 


THE 

HISTORICAL 

JESUS   OF   NAZARETH, 


BY 

M.    SCHLESIKGER,  PH.D. 
|| 

BABBI  OF  THE  CONGREGATION  ANSHE  EMETH,  ALBANY,  N.  Y. 


ni  17  BE  SIT  7 


NEW  YORK: 
CHARLES  P.  SOMERBY,  13&  EIGHTH  STREET. 

1876. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1876, 

BT  CHARLES  P.  SOMERBY, 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress  at  Washington,. 


THE 
HISTORICAL  JESUS   OF  NAZARETH. 


PKEFACE. 


"  IK  a  matter  so  solemn  as  that  of  religion,  all  men 
whose  temporal  interests  are  not  involved  in  existing 
institutions  earnestly  desire  to  find  the  truth."  *  If 
this  be  so,  as  it  surely  ought  to  be,  I  need  no  apology 
for  sending  out  the  following  pages  to  do  their  share  in 
assisting  men  to  find  the  truth. 

Ours  is  prominently  a  practical  age ;  the  discoveries 
and  inventions  of  every  branch  of  science,  no  sooner 
made,  are  applied  to  the  practical  aims  of  daily  life; 
every  new  idea  is  popularized  and  made  the  property  of 
the  millions.  Only  theology  seems  to  make  an  excep- 
tion. She,  once  the  presiding  mistress  in  the  halls  of 
science,  is  now  scarcely  recognized  as  entitled  to  admis- 
sion. Yet,  the  discoveries  of  theology  during  the  last  de- 
cades are  not  less  startling  and  suprising  than  those  made 
in  any  other  department  of  science.  That  they  are  less 
known  is  due  partly  to  the  theological  bias  of  society, 
partly  to  the  lack  of  popularization — or,  rather,  to  both, 
for  the  one  can  only  be  eradicated  by  the  other. 

It  is  especially  the  origin  of  Christianity  over  which 
a  flood  of  light  has  been  poured  by  the  exertions  of 
modern  scientific  theology,  and  of  which  a  more  inti- 
mate knowledge  must  be  desirable  to  every  thinking 
man. 

*  Draper,  History  of  the  Conflict  between  Religion  and  Science,  p.  vi, 


VI  PREFACE. 

To  give  a  brief  survey  of  these  discoveries,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  introduce  the  uninitiated  into  the  very 
laboratory  where  they  are  distilled — of  course,  after  re- 
moving every  indication  of  the  sweat  and  toil  they  have 
caused — is  the  aim  of  these  pages. 

1.  The  origin  of  Christianity  is  contained  in  the  Mes- 
sianic idea  of  Israel ;  the  one  cannot  be  understood  with- 
out a  full  appreciation  of  the  other.     "We  have,  therefore, 
to  trace  the  development  of  this  idea  from  its  incipient 
stages  down  to  the  time  of  Jesus. 

2.  Of  Jesus  and  his  time  the  New  Testament  alone 
gives  us  any  records,  which  we  must  necessarily  submit 
to  a  careful  examination  before  forming  any  judgment 
of  what  they  contain. 

3.  Having  done  this,  we  shall  be  enabled  to  sum  up 
what  a  thorough  and  conscientious  sifting  has  left  as  the 
truth,  and  finally  conclude  with  the  foundation  of  Chris- 
tianity by  Paul. 

With  this  brief  delineation  of  the  course  we  intend  to 
pursue,  we  mean  to  give  timely  warning  to  all  those  to 
whom  it  may  be  offensive.  Not  to  offend,  but  humbly 
to  contribute  to  the  general  enlightenment  in  so  great  and 
solemn  a  matter  as  religion,  is  our  desire. 

We  have  yet  to  state  that,  in  citing  the  Scriptures,  we 
were  often  compelled,  for  the  sake  of  truth,  to  deviate 
from  the  authorized  version  of  King  James'  Bible,  and 
give  our  own  translation  from  the  original  Hebrew  and 
Greek.  To  assist  the  ordinary  reader,  however,  we  fol- 
low the  division  of  chapters  and  verses  of  the  common 
version. 

Albany,  October,  1875. 


DEVELOPMENT    OF   THE    MESSIANIC  IDEA 
OF  ISRAEL  BEFORE  JESUS. 


THE  peculiarity  of  Israel,  so  often  noticed,  but  never 
fully  explained,  consists  mostly  in  its  Messianic  idea. 
It  is  a  people  that  cannot  perish,  because  it  is  a  people 
that  lives  for  and  by  an  ideal ;  an  ideal,  which,  suf- 
ficiently grand  and  inspiring  in  its  very  beginning,  did 
not  shrink  or  fade  with  the  intellectual  advance  and 
development  of  the  people,  but  always  evinced  the  capa- 
bility of  widening  and  expanding  in  grandeur  with  the 
widened  and  more  advanced  views  of  the  people.  The 
faith  in  the  final  realization  of  this  ideal  has  endowed 
this  people  with  that  vitality  and  elasticity  by  which  it 
defies  and  outlasts  the  ages. 

What  is  the  Messianic  idea  of  Israel  ?  Before  we 
answer  this  question,  we  have  to  premise  that,  originally 
and  fundamentally,  it  was  not  coupled  with  the  idea  of 
personality.  The  Messianic  idea  of  Israel  is  but  the 
outgrowth  of  the  entirely  optimistic  bend  of  mind  of  the 
old  Hebrews,  which  forced  upon  them  the  conviction 
that  every  thing  God  has  made  is  "  very  good."  Real- 
ity, the  actual  state  of  the  world  and  society,  con- 
tradicted, but  could  not  shake,  this  conviction.  The 


8  PRIMITIVE    FORM    OF    THE    MESSIANIC   IDEA. 

defective  state  of  the  world  and  society  was  too  obvious 
not  to  be  admitted,  but  only  led  to  the  proud  thought 
that  it  was  their  (Israel's)  destiny  to  lead  the  nations  to 
a  more  perfect  condition.  This  is  distinctly  announced 
at  the  very  beginning  of  their  history  (Genesis  xii.  3) : 
"  in  thee  all  the  generations  of  the  earth  shall  be  blest." 
All  the  laws,  statutes  and  institutions  of  Moses  are  repre- 
sented as  given  for  the  same  purpose  (Deut.  iv.  6) : 
"  that  they  be  your  wisdom  and  your  understanding  in 
the  eyes  of  the  nations,  who  shall  hear  of  all  these  stat- 
utes and  say,  Truly,  it  is  a  wise  and  understanding  nation, 
this  great  people." 

The  Messianic  idea,  therefore,  consists  in  this: 
that  the  people  of  Israel,  by  propagating  their  laws 
and  institutions  among  the  nations,  will  become  the 
savior  of  this  world.  But  the  course  of  events  did 
not  justify  this  conception.  The  nations  remained 
as  they  were,  and,  instead  of  being  influenced,  often 
influenced  Israel  by  their  idolatrous  laws  and  insti- 
tutions. To  sustain  the  old  hopes,  it  became  neces- 
sary to  call  in  the  supernatural  for  their  realization.  It 
became  the  popular  belief  that  this  imperfect  world  would 
be  destroyed  and  a  new  and  perfect  one  be  created.  Be- 
fore this  was  to  take  place,  a  day  of  judgment  was 
expected,  on  which  all  those  who  did  not  accept  the 
laws  and  institutions  of  Israel  were  to  be  judged. 

The  first  account  of  this  conception  we  find  in  the 
prophet  Joel,  who  prophesied  at  the  beginning  of  the 
reign  of  King  Usia  of  Judah  (about  800  B.C.)  Pales- 
tine had  been  visited  by  unheard-of  calamities :  there 
was  an  earthquake  which  made  the  inhabitants  reel  on 
their  feet,  and  the  hills  and  mountains  waver ;  thunder 
and  lightning,  together  with  the  roaring  and  howling  of 


MESSIANIC    IDEA    OF   JOEL.  9 

* 

the  sea,  caused  a  deafening  and  maddening  uproar  ;  the 
rising  vapors  darkened  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars ;  it 
seemed  as  if  their  light  had  been  withdrawn.  This 
violent  outburst  passed ;  but  those  who  survived  were  to 
learn  that  the  quietly  destructive  elements  were  still 
more  to  be  dreaded.  In  consequence  of  the  earthquake, 
the  rain  on  which  Palestine's  fruitfulness  depended 
failed,  all  the  wells,  and  brooks,  and  rivulets  were 
dried  up,  the  people  and  their  flocks  languished,  and 
even  the  wild  beasts  perished  on  the  fields.  The 
scorching  sun  sent  down  its  fiery  rays,  and  turned  the 
fields,  and  meadows,  and  gardens  into  a  wilderness. 
As  if  this  were  not  enough,  the  hosts  of  locusts  which 
generally  haunt  the  Hauran,  the  northeast  of  Palestine, 
swarmed  over  like  so  many  invincible  armies,  and 
greedily  devoured  every  green  leaf  that  was  left.  All 
hope  was  gone.  But  suddenly  one  of  those  tropical 
thunder-storms  came,  the  terrible  army  of  locusts  was  de- 
stroyed— washed  away,  or  driven  into  the  sea — and  at 
the  same  time  the  land  was  refreshed,  the  wells  were  filled, 
the  fields  and  gardens  and  meadows  clad  in  fresh  ver- 
dure, and  men  and  beasts  rejoiced  over  this  sudden  and 
unexpected  deliverance. 

If  this  world  were  to  be  destroyed — if  "  the  last 
days  "  were  to  c  ^me — after  this  experience  the  popu- 
lar expectation  could  take  shape  and  form.  And, 
indeed,  the  prophet  Joel,  who  during  these  calami- 
ties had  upheld  the  courage  of  the  inhabitants  in  Judea, 
saw  in  all  this  but  the  faint  promise  of  what  would  come 
to  pass  at  "  the  end  of  days,"  which  end  of  days  was 
always  considered  near  at  hand.  He  describes  it  (Joel 
iv.  1  if.),  "  For  behold,  in  those  days  and  at  that  time,  I 
shall  bring  back  the  captivity  of  Judah  and  Jerusalem. 


10  MESSIANIC   IDEA    OF   JOEL. 

And  I  will  gather  all  nations  and  bring  them  down  to 
the  valley  of  Josaphat,  and  will  plead  with  them  there." 
(Iv.  9),  "Proclaim  ye  this  among  the  nations,  prepare 
the  war,  wake  up  the  mighty  men,  let  all  the  men  of 
war  draw  near  and  go  up."  (Iv.  14),  "  Multitudes,  mul- 
titudes in  the  valley  of  decision,  for  near  is  the  day  of 
the  Lord  in  the  valley  of  decision.  Sun  and  moon  shall 
be  darkened,  and  the  stars  shall  withdraw  their  shin- 
ing. For  the  Lord  roars  out  of  Zion,  and  from  Jerusa- 
lem he  sends  forth  his  voice,  and  the  heavens  and  the 
earth  shall  shake,  but  the  Lord  is  refuge  to  his  people 
and  shelter  to  the  children  of  Israel."  And  then  (iii. 
1  ff.),  "I  will  pour  out  my  spirit  over  all  flesh,  and 
your  sons  and  daughters  shall  prophesy ;  your  old  men 
shall  dream  dreams,  and  your  young  men  shall  have 
visions.  And  also  upon  the  servants  and  the  hand- 
maids in  those  days  will  I  pour  out  my  spirit."  This 
oldest  description  of  the  approach  of  "  the  end  of  days  " 
became  typical,  and  was  only  modified  with  the  modi- 
fication of  the  Messianic  idea.  In  general  it  was  ex- 
pected that  days  of  great  and  unprecedented  trouble  and 
misery  would  come,  followed  by  the  day  of  judgment, 
when  all  nations  would  be  summoned  to  the  valley  of  Josa- 
phat (i.e., "  the  Lord  judges")  ;  fierce  battles  would  then 
take  place,  but  the  Lord's  people  would  be  victorious,  and, 
thenceforth,  the  Lord  would  reign  on  Mount  Zion,  and 
his  spirit  rest  upon  every  child  of  man. 

The  Messianic  idea  was  first  modified  by  Israel's  polit- 
ical difficulties.  The  northern  ten  tribes  had  seceded 
from  the  southern  tribes,  and,  consequently,  from  the 
national  sanctuary  in  Jerusalem.  This  secession,  together 
with  the  ambition  to  form  political  alliances,  opened  the 
gates  to  the  abominations  of  the  surrounding  nations.  The 


MESSIANIC    IDEA    OF    AMOS.  11 

consequence  was  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  northern 
kingdom,  the  kingdom  of  Israel,  soon  became  estranged 
from  the  faith  of  their  fathers.  This  state  of  things  had 
reached  the  climax  under  the  magnificent  reign  of  Jero- 
boam II.  (830-769  B.C.),  when  religious  decay  and  moral 
rottenness  progressed  so  rapidly  that  all  hopes  were  pre- 
cluded. Joel's  contemporaries,  the  prophets  Amos  and 
Hosea,  who  lived  and  prophesied  in  the  kingdom  of 
Israel,  turned  their  eyes  to  the  "  fallen  tabernacle  of 
David,"  as  their  only  hope.  The  breach  which  had  rent 
the  nation  into  two  separate  and  often  hostile  parts,  and 
which  had  become  so  fatal,  not  only  to  their  political, 
but  also  to  their  religious,  development,  seemed  irrepar- 
able ;  but  it  would  be  healed.  When  ?  Of  course,  in 
those  days  that  were  to  come.  Then  the  nation  would 
again  be  reunited  under  the  house  of  David.  The  Lord 
would  raise  up  a  second  David,  who,  like  the  first,  would 
unite  all  Israel  under  the  banner  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts ; 
and,  as  this  was  to  happen  at  "the  end  of  days,"  he  was 
expected  to  rule  over  all  nations.  The  Messianic  idea 
thus  underwent  the  first  great  and  important  modification. 
Thenceforth  it  was  assumed  that,  though  the  Lord  was 
and  would  be  the  sole  sovereign,  he  would  transfer  the 
ruling  power  of  the  mundane  world  to  his  anointed 
King  (i.e.,  Messiah).  Here  the  personal  Messiah  came  in, 
who  was  to  be  a  descendant  of  David,  the  king  who 
united  all  the  tribes  of  Israel  and  ruled  so  gloriously 
that  he  lived  in  the  memory  of  the  people  as  "  the  man 
after  the  Lord's  own  heart."  Now,  only  by  the  restor- 
ation of  this  house  to  the  government  of  the  whole 
nation,  by  "  the  sprouting  of  a  branch  out  of  Jesse's 
house,"  salvation  was  to  be  expected.- 

Amos  prophesies  (ix.  11  ff.):  (i  In  that  day  will  I  raise  up 


12  MESSIANIC   IDEA    OF    HOSE  A. 

the  tabernacle  of  David  that  is  fallen,  and  close  up  the 
breaches  thereof ;  and  I  will  raise  up  his  ruins  and  I  will 
build  it  as  in  the  days  of  old.  .  .  .  And  I  will  bring 
again  the  captivity  of  my  people  Israel,  and  they  shall 
build  the  waste  cities  and  inhabit  them,  and  they  shall 
plant  vineyards  and  drink  the  wine  thereof,  they  shall 
also  make  gardens  and  eat  the  fruit  thereof.  And  I 
will  plant  them  upon  their  land,  and  they  shall  no  more 
be  pulled  up  out  of  their  land  which  I  have  given  them, 
saith  the  Lord." 

And  Hosea  cannot  often  enough  exhort  Israel :  (vi.  1), 
"  Come, let  us  return"  ;  (xivl.), "Return,  O  Israel,  to  the 
Eternal,  thy  God,  for  thou  stumblest  over  thy  iniquity  " ; 
(iii.  5),  "  At  last  the  children  of  Israel  will  return  and 
seek  the  Eternal,  their  God,  and  David,  their  king,  at  the 
end  of  days"  ;  (i.  10,  11),  "  And  it  shall  come  to  pass, 
instead  of  being  called  '  not  my  people,'  they  shall  be 
called  ( children  of  the  living  God '  ;  then  shall  the 
children  of  Judah  and  the  children  of  Israel  be  gathered 
together  and  appoint  themselves  one  head,  and  they  shall 
come  up  out  of  the  land,  for  great  shall  be  the  day  of 
Jezreel." 

This  modification  of  the  Messianic  idea,  introduced  by 
the  northern  prophets,  was  readily  adopted  by  those 
prophesying  in  the  kingdom  of  Judah,  without,  however, 
influencing  their  broader  and  more  cosmopolitical  con- 
ception. The  grand  old  prophecy,  as  cited  by  Isaiah 
(ii.  2  ff.)  and  Micah  (iv.  1  if.),  which  some  critics  ascribe  to 
Joel,  always  remained  the  basis  on  which  the  later 
.prophets  builded ;  viz.:  "It  shall  come  to  pass  at  the  end 
of  days  that  the  mountain  of  the  Lord's  house  shall  be 
established  on  the  top  of  the  mountains,  and  shall  be 
exalted  above  the  hills,  and  all  nations  shall  flow  unto  it. 


MESSIANIC    IDKA    OF    ZECHARIAH   I.  13 

And  many  nations  shall  go  and  say,  Come  ye  and  let  us 
go  up  to  the  mountain  of  the  Lord,  to  the  house  of  the 
God  of  Jacob ;  and  he  will  teach  us  of  his  ways  and  we 
will  walk  in  his  paths ;  for  out  of  Zion  shall  go  forth 
the  law  and  the  word  of  the  Lord  from  Jerusalem. 
And  he  shall  judge  among  the  nations  and  shall  rebuke 
among  many  people,  and  they  shall  beat  their  swords 
into  ploughshares  and  their  spears  into  pruning  hooks  ; 
nation  shall  not  lift  up  sword  against  nation,  neither 
shall  they  learn  war  any  more."  It  was  a  proud  but 
ennobling  and  elevating  thought  that  out  of  Zion — 
i.e.,  out  of  the  midst  of  Israel — the  law  was  to  go  forth 
which  was  to  make  the  earth  an  habitation  of  peace  and 
good-will  under  the  divine  rule;  and,  since  the  Messianic 
king  out  of  the  house  of  David  was  to  be  the  visible  head 
of  the  government,  he  became  the  king  of  peace  and 
justice  and  love,  the  ideal  of  meekness  and  humility. 

This  somewhat-changed  hope  we  find  already  dis- 
tinctly stated  by  Zechariah  I.*  (ix.  1  if.) :  "  The  word 
of  the  Lord  :  in  the  land  of  Hadrach  and  Damask  will  be 
his  [the  Lord's]  resting-place,  for  to  the  Lord  is  turned 
the  eye  of  all  men,  as  that  of  all  the  tribes  of  Israel. 
Also  in  Hamath,  which  borders  on  it,  and  in  Tyre  and 
Zidon,  which  is  very  wise."  Having  announced  the 


*  The  book  of  Zechariali,  as  is  well  known,  is  not  the  work  of 
one  author  ;  there  are  three  little  books  compiled  into  one,  proba- 
bly because  the  prophets  of  all  these  speeches  had  the  name  of 
Zechariah.  Chaps,  i.-ix.  are  prophecies  of  Zechariah  III.,  a  prophet 
who  returned  with  the  Babylonian  exiles  and  prophesied  between 
52l-.:)  18  I'.  C.  Chaps,  ix.-xii.  contain  two  speeches  of  Zechariah  I. , 
who  lived  and  prophesied  between  748-727  B.C.  Chaps,  xii.-xiv. 
form  the  separate  little  book  of  Zechariah  II. ,  who  lived  and  proph- 
esied immediately  before  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  between 
590-588  B.C. 


14:  MESSIANIC   IDEA    OF   ISAIAH   I. 

Lord's  rebuke  to  the  wicked  of  these  nations,  the  prophet 
continues  (ix.  7  ff.) :  "  Their  bloody  deeds  I  take  away 
out  of  their  mouth,  and  their  abominations  from  between 
their  teeth,  and  it  will  also  remain  to  our  Lord,  and  it 
will  be  like  a  tribe  of  Judah,  and  Ekron  like  Jebusi  [i.e., 
Jerusalem].  .  .  .  Rejoice  greatly,  O  daughter  of  Zion  ! 
shout,  O  daughter  of  Jerusalem !  behold,  thy  king  com- 
eth  unto  thee ;  he  is  just  and  victorious,  lowly,  and  riding 
upon  an  ass,  and  upon  a  colt,  the  foal  of  an  ass.  For  I 
will  cut  off  the  chariot  from  Ephraim,  and  the  horse  from 
Jerusalem,  and  the  battle  bow  shall  be  cut  off,  and  he 
shall  speak  peace  to  the  nations,  and  his  dominion  shall 
be  from  sea  to  sea,  and  from  the  river  [Euphrates]  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth." 

Isaiah  I.,*  the  most  influential  of  all  the  prophets,  went 
still  further  ;  he,  for  the  first  time,  connected  these  hopes 
with  a  distinct  personality  ;  viz. :  King  Hezekiah  (724- 
696  B.C.).  Time  and  circumstances  seemed  to  justify  his 
hopes.  Under  Hezekiah's  father,  the  weak  Ahaz  (739- 
725  B.C.),  the  surrounding  nations,  led  by  Rezin,  king  of 
Damask,  and  Pekah,  king  of  Israel,  had  conspired,  not 
only  to  make  war  against  Judah,  but  to  dethrone  the 
house  of  David  and  put  in  its  place  a  certain  Ben-Tobal 
(Isaiah  vii.  1-7).  Ahaz  was  in  despair,  the  population 
trembled,  only  the  prophet  Isaiah  was  confident  of  the 

*  The  book  of  Isaiah  is  likewise  composed  of  the  products  of  va- 
rious authors,  which,  however,  can  be  divided  in  two  parts,  chaps, 
i.-xl.  and  xl.-lxvi.  The  first  part,  chaps,  i.-xxxv.,  contains  mostly 
the  speeches  of  Isaiah  I.,  who  prophesied  between  755-709  B.C., 
though  some  parts  of  these  speeches  must  be  of  later  date  ;  to  this 
are  added  the  historical  chapters  xxxv.-xl.  The  second  part,  chaps, 
xl.-lxvi.,  belongs  mostly  to  an  unknown  prophet,  probably  like- 
wise of  the  name  of  Isaiah,  who  lived  among  the  Babylonian  ex- 
iles shortly  before  their  return  to  Palestine  ;  he  is  called  Isaiah  IL 


MESSIANIC    IDEA    OF    ISAIAH   I.  15 

assistance  of  the  Lord.  In  his  speech  to  the  wavering 
and  unbelieving  king,  he  gives  him  as  a  sign  (Isaiah 
vii.  14  ff.) :  "  Behold,  this  young  woman"  [pointing  to  a 
young  woman  in  the  crowd;  the  erroneous  translationof 
the  Hebrew  Almah  with  virgin  is  too  well  known  as 
such  to  need  correction]  "  shall  conceive  and  bear  a  son, 
whose  name  she  shall  call  Emanuel"  [God  with  us],  "  for 
lie  shall  witness  the  misery  breaking  upon  the  people  and 
also  the  salvation  of  the  Lord."  The  salvation  came ; 
Ahaz  was  delivered  from  his  enemies ;  but,  instead  of 
strengthening  himself  by  the  national  faith,  he  thought 
it  more  political  to  introduce  the  Assyrian  idolatry  ;  the 
gods  of  his  master  were  also  to  be  his  gods,  and  Judah 
became  as  idolatrous  as  Ephraim.  The  faithful  would 
have  been  driven  to  despondency  if  it  had  not  been  for 
the  hopes  they  placed  in  the  coming  king,  the  young, 
hopeful,  and  promising  prince  Ilezekiah,  who  probably 
was  under  Isaiah's  tuition.  He  was  to  be  the  Messiah, 
and  of  him  Isaiah  sings  (ix.  2  ff.) :  "  The  people  that 
walked  in  darkness  have  seen  a  great  light ;  they  that 
dwell  in  the  land  of  the  shadow  of  death,  upon  them  has 
light  risen.  .  .  .  For  unto  us  a  child  is  born,  unto  us 
a  son  is  given,  and  the  government  is  on  his  shoulder,  and 
his  name  is  called  Wonder,  Counsellor,  Mighty  One  of 
the  Lord,  Everlasting  Father,  Prince  of  Peace.  To 
increase  the  government  and  never-ending  peace  upon 
the  throne  of  David  and  upon  his  kingdom,  to  establish 
it  and  found  it  on  judgment  and  justice  for  evermore. 
The  zeal  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts  will  perform  this."  It 
seemed  as  if  the  prophet's  hopes  were  literally  to  be  ful- 
filled, for  soon  the  great  catastrophe,  so  long  foretold  by 
the  former  prophets,  took  place.  The  kingdom  of  Israel 
was  destroyed  (720  B.C.) — "the  land  had  spewed  out  the 


16  MESSIANIC   IDEA    OF    ISAIAH   I. 

people  on  account  of  their  wickedness."  The  faithful 
that  were  left  of  Israel  now  joined  Judah ;  in  Judah  and 
Jerusalem  the  Jehovistic  party  came  into  ascendancy, 
and,  to  a  certain  extent,  Ephraim  and  Judah  were 
indeed  reunited  under  one  just  and  righteous  king  of 
the  house  of  David.  But,  alas  !  it  was  not  even  the 
shadow  of  all  those  bright  hopes  entertained  by  the 
people  and  their  prophets.  Hezekiah  was  a  good,  pious 
and  virtuous  king,  but  not  equal  to  the  many  adverse 
circumstances  that  surrounded  him ;  he  was  not  what 
Isaiah  had  hoped  and  expected. 

The  prophet's  and  the  people's  hopes,  however,  re- 
mained unshaken  ;  they  were  only  pushed  forward  to  a 
more  distant  future.  To  this  the  prophet  gives  utter- 
ance in  one  of  his  latest  prophecies  (xi.  1  if.) :  "  A  rod 
shall  come  forth  out  of  the  stem  of  Jesse,  and  a  branch 
shall  grow  out  of  his  roots.  And  the  spirit  of  the 
Lord  shall  rest  upon  him,  the  spirit  of  wisdom  and  un- 
derstanding, the  spirit  of  counsel  and  might,  the  spirit 
of  knowledge  and  of  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  .  .  .  and 
he  shall  not  judge  after  the  sight  of  his  eyes,  neither  re- 
prove after  the  hearing  of  his  ears.  But  with  righteous- 
ness shall  he  judge  the  poor,  and  reprove  with  equity  the 
meek  of  the  earth  ;  and  he  shall  smite  the  earth  with  the 
rod  of  his  mouth,  and  with  the  breath  of  his  lips  shall 
he  slay  the  wicked.  And  righteousness  shall  be  the 
girdle  of  his  loins,  and  faithfulness  the  girdle  of 
his  reins.  The  wolf  shall  dwell  with  the  lamb,  and 
the  leopard  shall  lie  down  witli  the  kid,  and  the  calf  and 
the  young  lion  and  the  fatling  together,  and  a  little; 
child  shall  lead  them.  They  shall  not  hurt  nor  destroy 
on  all  my  holy  mountain,  for  the  earth  shall  be  full  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  Lord,  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea." 


^%>>  o»  raf 

(WVBESim 

MES&IANIO   IDEA  OF  MICAH.  17 

The  same  hopes  inspired  Isaiah's  younger  contempo- 
rary, Micah,  who  shows  himself  a  worthy  pupil  of  the 
master  he  imitates.  As  Isaiah,  so  does  he  refer  to  the 
old  prophecy  of  the  general  kingdom  of  peace  (Micah 
iv.  1  ff.) ;  he  even  enlarges  upon  it  by  adding  "  and  then 
every  man  shall  sit  under  his  vine  and  under  his  fig-tree, 
and  none  shall  disturb,  for  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts 
hath  spoken  it.  For  let  all  the  nations  walk  every  one 
in  the  name  of  his  god,  and  we  will  walk  in  the  name 
of  the  Eternal,  our  God,  forever  and  ever"  [that  is  to 
say,  though  on  different  roads,  all  nations  will  at  last 
meet  at  the  same  goal].  "In  that  day  I  will  gather 
those  that  halt,  and  bring  in  those  who  were  cast 
off,  and  those  I  have  afflicted,  and  the  Eternal  shall 
reign  over  them  on  Mount  Zion  from  then  to  evermore." 
As  Isaiah  prophesies  of  the  child  that  is  yet  to  be 
born,  Micah  likewise  speaks  (v.  3) :  "  how  they  are 
delivered  up  until  she  that  travaileth  shall  have  brought 
forth."  As  Isaiah  looks  for  the  branch  that  is  to  rise 
out  of  the  stem  of  Jesse,  whose  original  domicile  was 
Bethlehem  in  Judah,  Micah  likewise  exclaims  (v.  2) : 
u  And  thou  Bethlehem  Ephratah,  though  thou  be 
little  among  the  thousands  of  Judah,  yet  out  of  thee 
shall  he  come  forth  that  is  to  be  ruler  in  Israel, 
whose  going  forth  hath  been  from  old,  from  everlast- 
ing. "  We  need  not  say  that  these  prophecies  of  Isaiah 
and  Micah  which  speak  of  King  Hezekiah  greatly  influ- 
ei^ced  the  views  of  later  generations  about  the  Mes- 
siah. It  became  part  and  parcel  of  the  Messianic 
belief  that  the  Messiah  was  not  only  to  be  a  branch 
out  of  the  root  of  Jesse,  but  was  also  to  be  born  in 
Bethlehem ;  hence  the  legends  in  the  New  Testament 
of  the  descent  and  birth  of  Jesus.  Nor  is  it  necessary 


I  MESSIANIC   IDEA    OF   JEKEMlAfi. 

to  mention  that  the  Almah  of  Isaiah  was  afterward 
employed  to  justify  the  later  Christian  doctrine  of  a 
Virgin-mother  of  God. 

How  tenaciously  the  Messianic  idea  clung  to  Israel  is 
best  seen  in  their  greatest  calamity.  Jeremiah  (627- 
570  B.C.),  the  gloomiest  of  the  prophets,  who  had  seen 
the  misery  of  his  people,  which  he  was  doomed  to  an- 
nounce for  many  years  to  an  infatuated  and  unbe- 
lieving crowd — even  he  had  confidence  in  a  glorious 
restoration.  He  describes  it  (xxxiii.  14  ff.)  :  "  Behold,  the 
days  come,  saith  the  Lord,  that  I  will  perform  that  good 
thing  which  I  have  promised  unto  the  house  of  Judah. 
In  those  days,  and  at  that  time,  I  will  cause  the  branch 
of  righteousness  to  grow  up  unto  David,  and  he  shall 
execute  judgment  and  righteousness  in  the  land.  In 
those  days  shall  Judah  be  saved  and  Jerusalem  shall 
dwell  safely  ;  and  this  is  the  name  wherewith  he  shall  be 
called,  '  the  Lord  our  righteousness.'  For  thus  saith  the 
Lord,  David  shall  never  want  a  man  to  sit  upon  the 
throne  of  the  house  of  Israel."  Notwithstanding  the 
derision  of  the  people  (xxxiii.  20-1),  he  remains  hopeful: 
"  Thus  speaks  the  Lord,  if  ye  can  break  my  covenant  of 
the  day,,  and  my  covenant  of  the  night,  that  there  should 
not  be  day  and  night  in  their  season,  then  may  also 
my  covenant  be  broken  with  David,  my  servant,  that  he 
should  not  have  a  son  to  reign  upon  his  throne."  But 
the  woe  and  misery  of  the  Captivity  which  was  then 
staring  in  the  face  of  the  nation  again  caused  a  change, 
and  that  a  very  ennobling  one,  in  the  original  conception 
of  the  Messianic  idea.  The  more  thoughtful  became 
convinced  that  the  Messianic  time  could  only  be  brought 
about  by  a  moral  elevation  of  the  whole  nation ;  that 
purity  of  heart  and  soul,  of  intention  and  action,  must  be 


MESSIANIC  IDEA  OF  JE&EMIAH.  19 

the  root  out  of  which  the  Messianic  time  would  spontane- 
ously grow  and  blossom,  and  bring  the  noble  fruits 
promised  by  former  prophets.  We  find  it  first  ex- 
pressed in  Jeremiah  (xxxi.  31  ff.) :  "  Behold,  the  days 
come,  saith  the  Lord,  that  I  will  make  a  new  covenant 
with  the  house  of  Israel  and  with  the  house  of  Judah. 
Not  as  the  covenant  which  I  made  with  their  fathers  in 
the  days  that  I  took  them  by  the  hand  to  bring  them 
out  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  which  covenant  they  brake 
so  that  I  loathed  them,  saith  the  Lord.  But  this  shall  be 
the  covenant  that  I  will  make  with  the  house  of  Israel. 
I  will  put  my  law  in  their  inward  parts,  and  will  be  their 
God,  and  they  shall  be  my  people.  And  then  they  shall 
teach  no  more  every  man  his  neighbor,  and  every  man  his 
brother,  saying,  Know  ye  the  Lord ;  for  they  shall  all 
know  me,  from  the  least  of  them  unto  the  greatest  of 
them,  saith  the  Lord;  for  I  will  forgive  their  iniquity 
and  will  remember  their  sin  no  more." 

This  new  light  in  which  henceforth  the  Messianic  idea 
appeared,  "that  by  a  pure  heart  on  which  the  law  of  the 
Lord  was  indelibly  engraved"  they  could  hasten  the 
days  of  the  Messiah,  was  sufficient  to  illumine  the  dark- 
ness of  the  Captivity,  into  which  they  went  downcast,  but 
not  hopeless.  The  Captivity  did  not  impair,  but  rather 
fostered,  the  old  hopes,  as  days  of  great  and  unpar- 
alleled calamities  were  thought  to  be  the  indispensable 
precursor  of  the  Messiah. 

The  prophet  of  the  Captivity,  Ezekiel,  who  prophesied 
between  593-570  B.C.,  gives  evident  proof  of  this.  He 
closely  followed  in  the  footprints  of  Jeremiah,  whose 
pupil  he  probably  was,  and  reiterated  still  more  emphat- 
ically the  change  of  heart  and  mind  which  were  neces- 
sary for  Israel  before  salvation  would  be  possible.  The 


MESSIAtflC    IDEA    OF    EZEKIEL. 

burden  of  his  hopes  for  the  future  is  everywhere  the  same 
(xxxvi.  24  if.) :  "  For  I  will  take  you  from  among  the 
nations,  and  gather  you  out  of  all  countries,  and  will 
bring  you  into  your  land.  Then  I  will  sprinkle  clean 
water  upon  you,  and  ye  shall  be  clean  from  your  un- 
cleanness,  and  from  all  your  idols  I. will  cleanse  you.  A 
new  heart  also  will  I  give  you,  and  a  new  spirit  will  I 
put  within  you  ;  and  I  will  take  away  the  stony  heart  out 
of  your  flesh,  and  I  will  give  you  a  heart  of  flesh.  And 
I  will  put  my  spirit  within  you,  and  cause  you  to  walk 
in  my  statutes,  and  ye  shall  keep  my  judgments  and  do 
them.  And  ye  shall  dwell  in  the  land  that  I  gave  to 
your  fathers,  and  ye  shall  be  my  people  and  I  will  be 
your  God."  (xxxiv.  23  ff.) :  "  And  I  will  set  up  one  shep- 
herd over  them  and  he  shall  feed  them,  even  my  servant 
David  ;^he  shall  feed  them  and  he  shall  be  their  shep- 
herd. And  I,  the  Lord,  will  be  their  God,  and  my  ser- 
vant David  a  prince  among  them;  I,  the  Lord,  have 
spoken  it.  And  I  will  make  with  them  a  covenant  of 
peace." 

Ezekiel  does  not  speak  of  a  Messiah-King ;  David  is 
prince,  the  first  among  equals  in  the  kingdom  of  the 
Lord.  With  the  destruction  of  the  commonwealth  of 
Judah  (586  B.C.)  and  the  Babylonian  exile  the  royalistic 
tendency  of  the  Messianic  hopes  loses  ground,  and  the 
idea  again  widens  to  its  original,  universal,  and  cosmo- 
political  meaning,  as  we  shall  see  in  its  subsequent  devel- 
opment. But  yet  another  thing  is  here  to  be  observed. 
With  Ezekiel  it  is  no  longer  a  branch  that  is  to  rise  out 
of  the  house  of  David  ;  it  is  David  himself,  who  is  to  be 
raised  up  (from  the  dead).  The  Messianic  idea  has 
again  to  adapt  itself  to  a  new  conception. 

The  belief  stated  in  Ecclesiastes  (xii.  7),  "  and  dust 


ORIGIN    OF    THE    BELIEF    IN    RESURRECTION.  21 

return eth  unto  dust  as  it  was,  but  the  spirit  returneth 
unto  Him  who  gave  it,"  i.e.9  the  belief  in  the  immortal- 
ity of  the  soul,  was  always  held  in  Israel  as  a  self-evi- 
dent truth.  Among  the  Parsees  of  Babylonia  they  met 
with  a  new  idea,  closely  allied  to  that  of  immortality, 
which  they  seized  eagerly;  it  was  that  of  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead.  There  must  have  been  tin  inner  want 
and  urgency  for  such  a  ready  adoption  of  a  foreign 
idea,  generally  so  repulsive  to  Israel,  and  this  we 
can  easily  explain.  The  present  generation,  despairing 
of  ever  seeing  the  realization  of  their  hopes,  yet  longing 
for  it  witli  all  their  hearts,  fondly  embraced  a  concep- 
tion according  to  which  the  fulfillment  of  their  hopes 
was  insured  against  all  casualties.  The  time  of  the 
Messiah  is  long  delayed ;  they  will  probably  not  live  to 
see  it ;  but  no  matter — they  will  all  participate  in  the 
good  things  which  he  will  bring  about  here  on  earth ; 
the  resurrection  of  the  dead  will  restore  the  good  and 
pious  of  all  generations  to  a  new  life  here  on  earth.* 
Ezekiel,  in  his  renowned  vision  (xxxvii.  1-15),  sees  the 
whole  nation  rise  out  of  their  graves  and  become  united 


*  It  took  a  long  time  before  this  new  and  foreign  conception  of 
immortality,  though  blended  with  the  so-much-cherished  Messi- 
anic hopes,  became  the  belief  of  the  whole  nation.  At  the  time 
of  Jesus  there  were  especially  the  Sadducees  who  repudiated 
resurrection.  The  Sadducees,  satisfied  with  the  aristocratic 
position  they  occupied,  were  not  desirous  of  a  new  state  of  things 
which  the  Messiah  was  to  bring  about,  and  therefore  smilingly 
and  incredulously  looked  upon  the  Messianic  hopes  of  the 
people.  But  the  Pharisees,  who  were  advocating  the  equality 
and  priestly  sanctity  of  the  whole  people — which,  if  not  now,  was 
to  be  brought  about  at  the  time  of  the  Messiah — welcomed  the 
belief  in  resurrection  as  a  consolation  for  their  present  disap- 
pointment ;  wherefore  they  made  it  one  of  their  doctrines,  which, 
in  the  course  of  time,  became  a  kind  of  dogma. 


22  MESSIANIC   IDEA    OF    ISAIAH   II. 

under  the  one  shepherd  David,  who  will  lead  and  feed 
his  flock. 

Ezekiel,  discarding  the  branch  that  is  to  rise  out  of  the 
house  of  David,  speaks  of  David  as  of  one  who  is  to  rise 
from  the  dead  with  all  the  rest  of  the  righteous;  but 
Isaiah  II.,  the  great  agitator  of  the  Captivity,  who  never 
tires  of  encouraging  the  wavering  and  faint-hearted 
exiles,  now  chiding  with  his  deep-cutting  sarcasm,  now 
inspiring  by  the  sweet  strains  of  his  magnificent  poetry, 
assumes  a  far  loftier  position.  Neither  the  house  of 
David  nor  David  is  mentioned  any  longer  ;  he  sees  the 
Messiah  in  Cyrus,  the  victorious  king  of  Persia,  who 
will  break  down  Babylonia,  Israel's  house  of  bondage, 
loosen  the  chains  of  the  captives,  set  them  free,  and  re- 
store the  old  glory  of  Zion  (Isaiah  xxxxii.  1  ff.;  xlv.  1 
ff.) :  "Thus  saith  the  Lord  to  his  Messiah,  to  Cyrus,  whose 
right  hand  I  have  holden,  to  subdue  nations  before  him  ; 
and  I  will  loose  the  loins  of  kings  to  open  before  him 
the  two-leaved  gates,  and  the  gates  shall  not  be  shut; 
.  that  thou  mayest  know  that  I,  the  Lord,  who  hath 
called  thee  by  thy  name,  am  the  God  of  Israel.  For 
Jacob  my  servant's  sake,  and  Israel  mine  elect,  I  have 
even  called  thee  by  thy  name  :  .  .  .  I  am  the  Lord, 
and  there  is  none  else  ;  there  is  no  God  beside  me.  I 
guided  thee,  though  thou  hast  not  known  me.  That 
they  may  know  from  the  rising  of  the  sun,  and  from  the 
west,  that  there  is  none  beside  me.  .  .  .  (xlvii.  4)  : 
"As  for  our  Redeemer,  the  Lord  of  Hosts  is  his  name,  the 
Holy  One  of  Israel."  He  sees  the  returned  exiles  with 
joy  and  glory  come  to  Zion,  and  sings  (lii.  7  if.),  "  How 
beautiful  upon  the  mountains  are  the  feet  of  him  that 
bringeth  good  tidings,  that  publisheth  peace  ;  that  bring- 
eth  good  tidings  of  good,  that  publisheth  salvation  j  that 


MESSIANIC   IDEA   OF   ISAIAH   II.  23 

saith  unto  Zion,  Thy  God  reigneth  !  Thy  watchmen  shall 
lift  up  the  voice ;  together  shall  they  sing ;  for  they  shall 
see  eye  to  eye  when  the  Lord  shall  bring  again  Zion." 
To  him  the  coming  salvation  is  no  longer  national,  but 
universal  (Ivi.  6  ff.) :  "  Also  the  sons  of  the  stranger, 
that  join  themselves  to  the  Lord,  to  serve  him  and  to 
love  the  name  of  the  Lord,  to  be  his  servants,  every  one 
that  keepeth  the  Sabbath  from  polluting  it,  and  taketh 
hold  of  my  covenant ;  even  them  will  I  bring  to  my 
holy  mountain,  and  make  them  joyful  in  my  house  of 
prayer ;  their  burnt-offerings  and  their  sacrifices  shall 
be  accepted  upon  my  altar ;  for  my  house  shall  be  called 
a  house  of  prayer  for  all  nations.  The  Lord  God,  who 
gathereth  the  exiled  of  Israel,  saith,  Yet  will  I  gather 
others  to  him  beside  those  that  are  gathered  to  him." 

Alas  !  reality  did  not  come  up  to  his  beautiful  dreams. 
Indeed,  Cyrus  permitted  Israel  to  return  ;  but  very  few  of 
the  Babylonian  exiles  could  be  induced  to  participate  in 
the  establishment  of  the  new  heavenly  kingdom.  He 
had  to  feel  the  pangs  of  hopes  long  deferred ;  still  the 
prophet's  confidence  in  a  coming  time  of  universal  peace 
and  love  and  justice  was  as  little  shaken  as  that  of  the 
first  Isaiah,  when  disappointed  in  his  Messiah,  King 
Hezekiah.  He  returns  (Ixv.  8-25)  to  the  last  hopes  of 
his  illustrious  predecessor;  in  the  distant  future  he  sees 
accomplished  what  his  sluggish  contemporaries  did  not 
desire  to  gain  for  themselves.  In  his  last  prophecy  he 
.again  announces  the  day  of  judgment,  after  which  all 
nations  will  come  up  to  Jerusalem  (Ixvi.  23) :  "  And  it 
shall  come  to  pass  that  from  one  new  moon  to  another, 
and  from  one  Sabbath  to  another,  shall  all  flesh  come  to 
.worship  before  me,  saith  the  Lord." 

Henceforth  David's  house,  formerly  such,  a  prominent 


24  MESSIANIC    IDEA   OF   THE   LAST    PROPHETS. 

element  of  the  Messianic  idea,  loses  more  and  more  of 
its  importance.  Only  Haggai  and  Zechariah  III.  faintly 
refer  to  him,  as  Zerubbabel,  one  of  the  two  leaders  of  the 
returned  exiles,  was  of  David's  house.  Haggai  says 
(ii.  23)  :  "  On  that  day,"  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts,  1  will 
take  Zerubbabel,  the  son  of  Shealtiel,  my  servant,  saith 
the  Lord,  and  I  will  make  thee  as  a  seal  ;  for  thee  I  have 
chosen,  saith  the  Lord."  And  Zechariah  III.  (vi.  12): 
"  And  speak  unto  him,  saying,  Thus  speaketh  the  Lord  of 
Hosts,  saying,  Behold  the  man  [Zerubbabel]  whose  name 
is  The  Branch,  for  from  under  him  it  shall  branch  forth, 
and  he  shall  build  the  temple  of  the  Lord."  It  was  the 
restoration  of  the  temple  and  the  Jehovah-cult  that  was 
most  at  the  heart  of  the  new  generation ;  and  therefore 
Zerubbabel,  the  branch  out  of  the  house  of  David,  was 
overshadowed  by  Joshua,  the  son  of  Yotsadak;  the 
priestly  family  supersedes  the  royal ;  not  the  temporal, 
but  the  spiritual  influence  which  Israel  will  exercise  over 
the  nations  is  now  emphasized  :  "  when  the  law  shall  go 
forth  from  Zion,  and  the  word  of  the  Lord  from  Jerusa- 
lem." Yery  significant  for  these  changed  hopes  are  the 
words  of  the  last  of  the  prophets,  Malachi.  He  does  not 
expect  a  Messiah-King,  but  a  messenger,  a  forerunner,  who 
is  to  prepare  Israel,  or  the  world,  for  the  great  day  of  the 
Lord,  when  he  will  come  and  judge  and  then  rule  alone. 
This  messenger  is  no  longer  the  anointed  king,  the 
Messiah,  but  Elijah  the  prophet  (Mai.  iv.  5) :  "  Behold,  I 
will  send  you  Elijah,  the  prophet,  before  the  coming  of 
the  great  and  dreadful  day  of  the  Lord :  and  he  shall 
turn  the  hearts  of  the  fathers  to  the  children,  and  the 
hearts  of  the  children  to  their  fathers,  lest  I  come  and 
smite  the  earth  with  ban." 

The  history  of  Israel  during  the  next  three  hundred 


MESSIANIC   IDEA    OF   THE   RETURNED   EXILES.  25 

years,  from  the  restoration  of  the  second  temple  to  the 
Maccabean  era  (500-175  B.C.),  shows  almost  a  blank. 
It  was  a  period  of  rest  and  quietude,  so  necessary  for 
every  rejuvenescence.  The  Jewish  colonies  in  Palestine 
were  too  insignificant  to  aspire  to  any  political  impor- 
tance, and  therefore  willingly  resigned  themselves  to  the 
supremacy  of  the  great  world-powers  that  superseded 
each  other;  they  were  loyal  subjects:  first,  of  the  Per- 
sians; then  the  Macedonians,  under  Alexander  the 
Great ;  and,  after  his  death,  willingly  submitted  to  his 
successors  in  Egypt  and  Syria.  The  bright  hopes  which 
the  enthusiastic  prophets  had  upheld  were  in  glaring 
contrast  to  their  insignificance ;  there  were  too  many  little 
practical  aims  which  required  all  their  attention,  and  no 
leisure  nor  inclination  was  left  for  dreams  of  a  dim 
future.  Nevertheless,  this  period  of  seeming  relaxation 
was  well  employed.  During  this  time  the  Mosaic  laws 
and  institutions  were  developed,  and  became  so  deeply 
rooted  in  the  mind  and  heart  of  the  people,  that  they, 
who  formerly  always  relapsed  into  idolatry,  who  always 
needed  the  chastening  rod  of  the  prophets,  henceforth 
showed  themselves  the  most  faithful  keepers  and  pre- 
servers of  "  the  law  "  and  the  belief  in  the  one  spiritual 
God  of  Israel.  This  faith  and  law  became  dearer  to 
them  than  country  and  nationality  and  political  impor- 
tance. Therefore,  when  Antiochus  Epiphanes  (176- 
164  B.C.)  threatened  to  deprive  the  Jewish  colonies  in 
Palestine  of  this  inheritance,  the  old  heroism  was  re- 
awakened. Such  a  time  of  cruel  oppression  and  perse- 
cution, followed  by  glorious  victories  of  the  few  un- 
disciplined patriots  over  the  magnificent  and  dreaded 
armies  of  the  Syrians,  naturally  recalled  the  old  Messi- 
anic hopes  of  the  people.  The  book  of  Daniel,  written 


26  MESSIANIC    HOPES    DURING 

at  that  time,  interprets  the  national  feeling  of  those 
days.  To  enlist  at  once  the  interest  of  his  contempo- 
raries, the  author  ascribes  his  book  to  a  certain  Daniel 
who  lived  during  the  Babylonian  captivity.  The  first 
chapters  contain  stories  and  legends  apt  to  encourage 
the  people  in  their  perseverance  to  obey  the  law  of  the 
Lord,  in  spite  of  the  oppression  and  persecution  of  the 
rulers,  which,  the  author  is  convinced,  cannot  last  for- 
ever. To  give  a  demonstratio  ad  hominem,  he  repre- 
sents the  past  as  well  as  the  future  history  of  Israel  in 
prophetic  visions,  ascribed  to  Daniel  in  Babylonia. 
Now,  since  the  past  has  been  fulfilled  according  to 
these  visions,  the  predictions  of  the  future  will  undoubt- 
edly likewise  be  true  (Dan.  vii.  7).  The  four  beasts 
are  the  four  kingdoms  of  Babylonia,  Media,  Persia  and 
Macedonia.  They  destroy  each  other  and  vanish,  until, 
on  the  day  of  judgment,  they  are  all  punished;  but 
then  (Dan.  vii.  1?,  14),  "with  the  clouds  of  heaven 
there  came  one  like  the  Son  of  man  to  the  Ancient  of 
Days,  and  they  brought  him  near  before  him;  and  there 
was  given  him  dominion  and  glory  and  a  kingdom,  that 
all  people,  nations  and  languages  should  serve  him;  his 
dominion  is  an  everlasting  dominion,  which  shall  not 
pass  away,  and  his  kingdom  that  which  shall  not  be 
destroyed."  The  "  Son  of  Man,"  who  is  to  come 
with  the  clouds  of  heaven,  is  only  a  poetic  expression 
for  "  the  people  of  Israel,"  as  the  explanation  given  to 
Daniel  explicitly  states  (vii.  27),  "and  the  kingdom 
and  dominion  and  the  greatness  of  the  kingdom  under 
the  whole  heaven  shall  be  given  to  the  people  of  the 
saints  of  the  Most  High." 

The  Messianic  idea  had  again  changed.     This  time 
the  change  effected  a  return  to  the  original  conception 


AND   AFTER   THE    MACCABEAN   WARS.  27 

of  tlie  Messianic  idea,  according  to  which  the  people  of 
Israel  was  to  become  the  savior  of  the  nations,  by 
bringing  to  them  the  law  of  love,  justice  and  righteous- 
ness, and  thus  preparing  the  world  for  the  heavenly  king- 
dom that  was  to  be  established  here  on  earth.  Similar 
efforts  we  notice  in  former  periods  (f.i.  Isaiah  liii.  2  if.) ; 
but  such  a  conception  could  be  brought  home  to  the 
heart  of  the  whole  people  only  after  the  preceding  cen- 
turies of  quiet  preparation.  Henceforth  we  find  the 
persona]  Messiah  no  longer  mentioned ;  neither  the  book 
of  Daniel,  the  Apocrypha,  nor  the  Sybillines  speak  of 
him.  But  the  doctrine  that  all  the  good,  pious  and  virtu- 
ous, who  were  helping  to  prepare  this  heavenly  kingdom 
would  surely  participate  in  it,  i.e.,  the  doctrine  of  the 
resurrection,  we  find  in  Daniel,  for  the  first  time, 
authoritatively  announced  (Dan.  xii.  1,2):  "  and  at  that 
time  shall  Michael  stand  up,  the  great  prince  which 
standeth  for  the  children  of  the  people  ;  and  there  shall 
be  a  time  of  trouble,  such  as  never  was  since  there  was 
a  nation  even  to  that  same  time ;  and  at  that  time  thy 
people  shall  be  delivered,  every  one  that  shall  be  found 
written  in  the  book.  And  many  of  them  that  sleep  in 
the  dust  of  the  earth  shall  awake,  some  to  everlasting 
life,  and  some  to  shame  and  everlasting  contempt." 

This  ardent  desire  for  the  day  of  judgment,  and  the 
heavenly  kingdom  that  was  to  follow,  soon  cooled  off 
considerably  in  the  next  century  under  the  Macca- 
bees, when  the  people  enjoyed  an  unwonted  prosperity 
and  independence.  We  see  it  best  from  two  striking 
incidents  related  in  the  first  book  of  Maccabees  (iv.  46) : 
"and  they  laid  up  the  stones  [of  the  altar  which  the 
heathen  had  defiled]  in  the  mountain  of  the  temple,  in  a 
convenient  place,  until  there  should  come  a  prophet  to 


28  MESSIANIC    HOPES 

show  what  should  be  done  with  them."  The  same  we 
find  again  at  the  election  of  Simon  as  high  priest  and 
ruler  (xiv.  41)  :  "  also  that  the  Jews  and  priests  were 
well  pleased  that  Simon  should  be  their  governor  and 
high  priest  forever,  until  there  should  arise  a  faithful 
prophet"  Henceforth  the  formula  of  the  Messianic 
belief  was :  "  The  prophet  Elijah  will  come  to  spread 
light  and  truth,  restore  everything  to  its  true  and  proper 
position,  right  all  those  who  were  wronged,  bring  near 
all  those  that  were  removed  "  (Babylonian  Talmud  Adu- 
yoth  viii.  Y).  The  state  of  affairs  under  the  Maccabees 
was  considered  temporary ;  but,  as  it  proved  quite  satis- 
factory, the  hopes  for  a  different  future  became  more 
and  more  theoretical  only. 

This,  however,  changed  entirely  when  Herod  seized 
upon  the  government  (37-4  B.C.)  He  was  of  foreign 
(Idumean)  descent ;  instead  of  the  lion  of  Judah,  the 
jackal  of  Idumea  had  assumed  the  power,  and,  with 
his  craftiness  and  cunning,  was  undermining  the  moun- 
tain of  the  Lord.  With  the  same  cruelty  and  un scru- 
pulousness with  which  he  had  extirpated  the  ruling 
high-priest  family  of  the  Maccabees,  he  now  oppressed 
the  people.  To  do  this  securely,  he  was  compelled  to 
lean  on  the  all-powerful  Romans,  and  acknowledge  them 
his  and  his  country's  lord  and  master.  Under  his  suc- 
cessors, who  inherited  all  of  his  vices,  but  none  of  his 
virtues,  Palestine  was  made  a  Roman  province,  where 
Roman  oppression  and  greediness  vied  with  that  of  the 
Herodians  to  drive  the  people  to  despair.  At  the  time 
of  Jesus,  days  again  came  when  the  Jews  of  Palestine 
could  think  of  the  future  only  with  trembling  and  de- 
spondency. The  iron  hee]  of  the  Romans  was  upon 
their  neck;  they  were  prostrated,  and  had  not  the  power 


IMMEDIATELY   BEFORE   JEStTS.  29 

to  rise ;  their  foremost  men,  the  aristocracy  and  priestly 
families,  fawned  for  the  oppressor's  smiles ;  the  different 
parties  were  in  continual  controversy  and  enmity — what 
was  yet  to  be  hoped  for  ?  This  world  was  ripe  to  per- 
ish, and  the  new  world,  of  which  the  prophets  had 
spoken  so  enthusiastically,  if  it  ever  was  to  come,  must 
now  surely  come.  But  it  could  be  brought  about  only 
by  a  strict  observance  of  the  Mosaic  law,  and  by  con- 
scientiously living  up  to  it;  therefore  repentance  and 
greater  piety  of  the  whole  people  were  necessary. 
Prophets  like  John  the  Baptist  arose,  who  exhorted  the 
people  to  repent  and  return  to  the  Lord,  for  the  king- 
dom of  the  Lord  was  near  at  hand;  enthusiastic  fanatics, 
like  Judah  of  Galilee,  the  founder  of  the  Zealots  party, 
repudiated  the  rulers  of  this  world,  and  declared  it  sinful 
to  pay  tribute  to  the  Romans.  Such  agitators,  with 
their  religious  enthusiasm,  their  burning  patriotism,  and 
intense  hatred  of  both  native  and  foreign  oppressors, 
stirred  up  the  common  people  to  a  feverish  restlessness, 
and  the  old  hopes  for  the  coming  of  a  Messiah  and 
deliverer  were  revived.  Even  of  those  who  led  a  more 
quiet  and  retired  life,  many  were  nourishing  the  fond 
hope  in  their  bosom  that  things  could  not  continue  this 
way  much  longer  (Luke  ii.  34).  This  corrupt  world 
must  soon  perish  and  the  heavenly  kingdom  commence.* 

*  To  counteract  this  excitement  among  the  lower  classes, 
which,  under  the  Roman  Government,  might  become  pernicious 
to  the  whole  nation,  the  better  and  more  educated  were  driven 
bluntly  to  deny  the  hope  of  a  Messiah.  The  Talmud  (Sanhedrin 
99  «.)  gives  no  Ies3  an  authority  than  Hillel  for  the  remarkable 
assertion  :  "Israel  has  no  longer  to  expect  a  Messiah,  as  he  has 
come  already  in  the  days  of  Hezekiah"  ;  that  is  to  say,  the  proph- 
ecies of  Isaiah  concerning  the  Messiah  refer  to  King  Hezekiah  only. 
Later  generations,  who  did  not  understand  this  timely  opposition 


30  JESTJ8   CLAIMS   THE   MESSIAHSHTP. 

The  leaders  and  agitators  were  confident  in  their  expec- 
tation, but  none  of  them  aspired  to  more  than  to  prepare 
the  people  for  the  coming  of  the  heavenly  kingdom  ;  the 
title  and  office  of  the  Messiah  remained  vacant,  without 
finding  one  so  bold  as  to  claim  it  for  himself.  The  first 
who,  after  long  hesitation  and  wavering,  did  claim  it 
was  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

to  the  wild  hopes  of  the  ignorant  crowds,  censured  Hillel  for 
his  bold  assertion.  Rabbi  Joseph  said,  "May  the  Lord  forgive 
Hillel  this  error,  for  did  not  King  Hczckiah  live  at  the  time  of 
the  first  temple  ?  Yet  prophets  living  at  the  time  of  the  second 
temple,  for  instance,  Zechariah,  prophesied  the  coming  of  the 
Messiah."  This  denial  of  the  Messianic  hopes  by  Hillel  and  his 
school  is  very  significant  and  extremely  important  for  a  correct 
conception  of  the  days  immediately  preceding  those  of  Jesus. 


IL 

NEW   TESTAMENT    LITEEATUKE. 

WHO  was  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  what  were  his  aims 
and  claims  ?  This  can  only  be  ascertained  from  the 
writings  which  compose  the  so-called  New  Testament ; 
for  all  other  records  which  we  possess  of  those  days — it 
is  very  remarkable — pass  him  over  with  profound  silence. 
Now,  turning  to  these  only  sources  of  information,  we 
unfortunately  find  them  so  full  of  contradictions,  that,  at 
the  first  glance,  it  seems  impossible  to  obtain  the  truth 
from  such  witnesses.  No  wonder  that  the  verdicts  of 
those  who  listened  to  them  have  been  as  various  as  the 
various  dispositions  brought  to  the  examination.  The 
orthodox  Christian  takes  every  word  they  say  for  divinely 
inspired  truth,  no  matter  how  impossible  it  may  be ;  and 
"  gospel  truth"  has  become  proverbial  in  more  than  one 
sense.  The  skeptic,  on  the  other  hand,  asserts  that 
truth  can  never  be  elicited  from  such  partial  testimony, 
which  is  but  fit  matter  for  mockery  and  ridicule. 
Neither  of  these,  however,  is  a  competent  judge ;  the  only 
competent  judge  was  born  in  our  century.  It  is  critical 
science  ;  and,  indeed,  it  is  surprising  what  she  has  been 
able  to  ascertain  by  merely  placing  these  various  wit- 
nesses on  their  true  standpoint. 

The  process  by  which  science  arrived  at  her  remarka- 
ble results  is  simple  enough.  She  followed  her  lead- 


32  SCIENTIFIC    RESEARCHES. 

ing  principle :  to  find  the  truth  no  matter  to  what 
consequences  it  might  lead,  or  what  cherished  preju- 
dices and  superstitions  might  be  overthrown.  With- 
out any  preconceptions  she  commenced  anew  the  whole 
work  of  examining,  comparing  and  sifting  the  testi- 
mony ;  and  thus,  by  scruuulously  weighing  the  evi- 
dence, and  laboriously  bringing  together  the  minutest 
data,  the  perplexing  chaos  was  reduced  to  order,  and 
the  mist  that  hovered  over  this  most  important  epoch 
of  the  history  of  mankind  was  dispelled.  The  re- 
sult is,  that  instead  of  a  supernatural  interference  of 
the  Divine  will,  we  now  see  nothing  but  the  natural 
evolution  of  certain  effects  from  certain  causes;  instead 
of  a  monotonous  unity  and  harmony  between  the  found- 
ers of  Christianity,  we  see  a  very  animated  struggle  for 
existence  between  the  various  parties  which  the  new 
creed  naturally  called  forth. 

It  is  impossible  to  give  an  adequate  idea  of  the  vast 
amount  of  talent,  labor,  and  patience  required  for  such 
researches ;  yet,  it  is  but  within  the  last  forty  years  that  all 
this  has  been  achieved.  It  was  in  the  year  1835  that  David 
Friedrich  Strauss  published  his  critical  "  Life  of  Jesus," 
and  thereby  conclusively  showed  to  every  one  who  was 
willing  to  see  that  the  four  Gospels  contain  mostly  a  web 
of  myth  and  legend,  woven  and  patterned  according  to 
the  conceptions  of  the  respective  authors,  and  the  require- 
ments of  the  time  and  party  to  which  they  belonged. 
But  how  are  we  to  trace  the  different  threads  and 
explain  the  various  colors  that  have  been  used  ?  Where 
are  we  to  get  the  standard  by  which  to  judge  their  work- 
manship, and  to  a  certainty  distinguish  the  historical 
from  the  legendary  ?  These  perplexing  questions  were 
answered  effectively  by  Ferdinand  Christian  Baur,  the 


THE    FOUR    EPISTLES 


—  —  *?-.^^ 

ingenious  teacher  of  Strauss.  He  first  called  attention 
to  the  four  epistles  of  Paul — the  one  to  the  Romans,  the 
two  to  the  Corinthians,  and  the  one  to  the  Galatians — 
which  admit  of  no  doubt  concerning  their  historical 
authenticity.  Examining  these  letters,  written  twenty 
years  after  the  crucifixion  (that  is,  about  50  A.C.),  what 
do  we  find  ?  Fierce  and  animated  struggles  between 
two  very  distinct  and  outspoken  parties  of  young  Chris- 
tianity. Paul,  in  all  his  epistles,  contended  against  anutln-i* 
gospel  and  another  doctrine,  which  differed  decidedly 
from  what  he  was  teaching  to  his  converts. 

And  what  was  this  different  gospel  ?  It  was  the  gos- 
pel as  preached  during  the  time  prior  to  Paul's  assuming 
the  office  and  title  of  apostle ;  it  was  the  gospel  as 
taught  to  the  church  in  Jerusalem  by  Peter  and  John 
and  James,  the  brother  of  Jesus ;  it  was  the  gospel  which 
the  disciples  who  personally  attended  Jesus  declared  to 
be  that  of  Jesus.  Paul's  gospel  is  entirely  his  own,  as 
he  himself  declares  that  he  never  condescended  to  learn 
from  man  (Gal.  i.  12,  16,  17) ;  that  is  to  say,  from  those 
disciples  who  personally  attended  Jesus.  Not  until  the 
third  year  of  his  apostleship  was  he  moved  to  go  from 
Damascus  to  Jerusalem.  He  found  the  atmosphere  of 
the  original  church  so  uncongenial  that  he  kept  aloof 
from  it,  and  only  conversed  with  Peter  and  James ;  and 
after  remaining  but  two  weeks,  he  departed,  somewhat 
disgusted,  to  resume  his  own  gospel  with  renewed  vigor 
in  Aritioch.  His  is  the  gospel  to  the  heathen  world 
which  declares  "  the  law"  abolished,  and  in  the  epistle 
to  the  Galatians  even  as  a  hindrance  to  the  true  belief 
in  Christ.  This  doctrine  amazed  the  Jew-Christians  in 
Jerusalem.  Many  of  these  frequently  came  to  Antioch, 
others  were  purposely  sent,  and  there  arose  endless 


34  THE    FOUR    EPIBTLES    OF    PAUL. 

quarrels.  Paul's  new  converts  were  estranged  from  him ; 
and  he  was  represented,  by  those  who  ought  to  know 
best,  as  a  heretic,  whose  doctrine  was  entirely  and  fun- 
damentally opposed  to  that  of  Jesus,  his  true  disciples 
and  followers.  Paul,  therefore,  to  make  an  end  of  these 
vexations,  felt  constrained  to  go  to  Jerusalem,  and  lay 
his  doctrine  and  plan  of  converting  the  heathen  world 
before  Peter,  James,  and  John — before  "  those  who 
seemed  to  be  pillars  of  the  church,"  or  "  the  very  chief- 
est  of  the  apostles,"  as  he  sometimes  ironically  calls 
them.  After  very  stormy  debates,  a  compromise  was 
agreed  upon  (Gal.  ii.  7-10) ;  they  gave  him  the  right 
hand  of  fellowship.  Paul  was  to  be  acknowledged  as 
the  apostle  of  the  heathen,  while  Peter  was  to  remain 
the  apostle  of  the  Je"ws.  How  weak  this  compromise 
was  in  establishing  peace  between  the  two  opposing 
parties,  is  to  be  seen  from  the  fact  that,  very  soon  after 
this,  Paul  was  again  involved  in  ugly  quarrels,  and  this 
time  with  Peter  himself,  whom  he  charges  with  hypoc- 
risy (Gal.  ii.  11-13):  "But  when  Peter  was  come  to 
Antioch,  I  withstood  him  to  the  very  face,  because  he 
was  to  be  blamed.  For  before  that  certain  came  from 
James  he  did  eat  with  the  Gentiles ;  but  when  they  had 
come,  he  withdrew  and  separated  himself,  fearing  them 
that  were  of  the  circumcision.  And  the  other  Jews 
dissembled  likewise  with  him  ;  insomuch  that  Barnabas 
[his  faithful  companion]  also  was  carried  away  with 
their  dissimulation.'' 

How  strong  and  powerful  this  anti-Pauline  party  must 
have  been,  we  may  conclude  from  the  influence  they  ex- 
erted even  in  the  churches  founded  by  Paul.  Not  only  in 
Antioch,  which  could  easily  be  reached  from  Jerusalem, 
but  also  in  Corinth,  he  had  the  same  adversaries  and  the 


EPISTLES    OF   PAUL.  35 

same  struggles.  In  Corintli  was  the  church  which  he 
loved  most,  loved  with  :i  passion  and  jealousy  that  could 
not  be  surpassed  by  the  most  enamored  youth.  How 
often  he  prays  in  his  epistles  (1  Cor.  iv.  16;  xi.  1), 
"  Wherefore,  I  beseech  you,  be  ye  followers  of  me  ;"  how 
often  he  assures  them  (2.  Cor.  vii.  3),  "ye  are  in  our 
hearts  to  die  and  to  live  with  you"  ;  how  he  glories  in 
them  (1  Cor.  ix.  1) :  "  are  not  ye  my  work  in  the 
Lord  ?"  (2  Cor.  ii.  4)  :  "  For  out  of  much  affliction  and 
anguish  of  heart  I  wrote  unto  you  with  many  tears ;  not 
that  ye  should  be  grieved,  but  that  ye  might  know  the 
love  which  I  have  more  abundantly  unto  you."  Noth- 
ing pains  him  more  than  that  they  also  should  desert  him 
and  his  gospel.  (1  Cor.  ix.  2) :  "  If  I  be  not  an  apostle 
unto  others,  yet  doubtless  I  am  to  you."  (2  Cor.  xii.  11) : 
"  I  am  become  a  fool  in  glorying  ;  ye  have  compelled  me : 
for  in  nothing  am  I  behind  the  very  chiefest  of  the  apos- 
tles, though  I  be  nothing."  Yet  he  has  scarcely  de- 
parted and  gone  to  Ephesus,  when  he  again  learns  how 
his  opponents,  even  in  this  his  pet  church,  are  becoming 
stronger  and  stronger  ;  there  are  already  many  who  say 
"I  am  of  Cephas,"  i.e.,  Peter  (1  Cor.  i.  12).  These 
opponents  decry  him  in  every  way ;  they  deny  him  the 
title  of  apostle,  and  speak  of  him  slightingly  as  of  one 
Avho  has  no  authority  (2  Cor.  xii.  11 ;  xi.  4-,  12,  18  ff.), 
while  they  come  well  recommended  from  the  very  pupils 
of  Jesus  in  Jerusalem  (2  Cor.  x.  12  if.) ;  they  call  him 
the  corrupter  of  the  Gospel  (2  Cor.  x.  2,  7) :  "  But  I 
beseech  you  that  I  may  not  be  bold,  when  I  am  present, 
with  that  confidence  wherewith  I  think  to  be  bold  against 
some  who  think  of  us  as  if  we  walked  according  to  the 
flesh."  "  If  any  man  trust  to  himself  that  he  is  Christ's, 
let  him  of  himself  think  this  again,  that-  as  he  is  Christ's, 


36  EPISTLES    OF    PAUL. 

even  so  are  we  Christ's."  They  mock  the  bombastic  style 
of  his  epistles,  contrasting  it  with  his  personal  appearance 
and  heavy  speech  (2  Cor.  x.  10) :  "  For  his  letters,  they 
say,  are  weighty  and  powerful ;  but  his  bodily  presence 
is  weak  and  his  speech  contemptible."  The  bitterness 
wherewith  he  defends  himself,  and  entreats  his  Corin- 
thians to  remain  faithful  to  him,  shows  how  influential 
his  opponents  must  have  been  (2  Cor.  xi.  2)  :  "  For  I 
am  jealous  over  you  with  a  godly  jealousy"  (2  Cor. 
xi.  4  if.) :  "  For  if  he  that  cometh  preacheth  another 
Jesus  whom  we  have  not  preached,  or  if  ye  receive 
another  spirit  which  ye  have  not  received,  or  another 
gospel  which  ye  have  not  accepted,  ye  might  well  bear 
with  him.  For  I  suppose  I  was  not  a  whit  behind  the 
very  chiefest  of  the  apostles.  But  though  I  be  rude  in 
speech,  yet  not  in  knowledge ;  but  we  have  been  made 
thoroughly  manifest  among  you  in  all  things,"  and  so  on 
through  the  whole  chapter. 

The  whole  burden  of  his  epistle  to  the  Romans — a 
church  risen  from  among  the  many  Jews  in  Rome,  with- 
out the  effort  of  any  of  the  apostles — is  nothing  but  the 
defence  of  his  doctrine,  which  declares  that  the  Gospel 
was  sent  to  the  Gentiles  as  well  as  to  the  Jews,  and 
therefore  "the  law"  must  be  superseded  by  faith. 
There  were  undoubtedly  evil  reports  of  him  spread 
among  them  (Rom.  iii.  8),  which  he  wished  to  dispel  be- 
fore coming  to  them,  as  he  intended  to  do  after  his  jour- 
ney to  Jerusalem.  He  thought  he  could  conciliate  his  op- 
ponents in  Jerusalem  by  bringing  them  the  rich  contribu- 
tions he  had'  gathered  from  among  his  heathen  converts 
for  the  "  poor  saints  "  in  Jerusalem,  as  he  had  promised 
to  do  when  the  compromise  (Gal.  ii.  10)  between  him 
and  the  original  apostles  was  accomplished,  and  which, 


THE    ACTS.  37 

indeed,  he  very  zealously  did.  He  came  triumphantly 
to  Jerusalem,  but  his  reception  was  far  from  what  he 
expected.  The  money  he  brought  was  called  a  bait 
held  out  by  him  to  the  true  apostles,  that  they  might 
acknowledge  his  title  of  apostle  and  admit  him  to  their 
ranks.  Thus,  hated  by  the  Jews  as  an  apostate,  and  by 
his  own  church  as  a  heretic,  he  fell  into  the  hands  of 
the  Komans,  who  brought  him  first  to  Csesarea,  and  then 
to  prison  in  Rome,  from  which  he  was  never  released. 

This  is  the  plain  and  simple  story  of  the  first  genera- 
tions after  Jesus  which  we  read  from  Paul's  epistle. 
But  quite  a  different  story  of  the  same  days  is  offered  to 
us  in  the  Acts,  its  next-door  neighbor.  In  Paul's  epistles 
everything  occurs  naturally,  without  the  interference  of 
signs  and  wonders ;  we  see  and  hear  real  men  acting, 
disputing,  reasoning  ;  all  the  human  passions  are  brought 
into  play,  and  a  picture  is  unfolded  which  corresponds  ex- 
actly to  our  own  daily  experiences.  But  how  different  in 
the  Acts,  which  pretends  to  relate  the  same  events  ! 
There  we  see  angels  and  spirits,  heaven  and  earth,  set  in 
motion  to  interfere  with  and  participate  in  the  actions  of 
man ;  everything  appears  in  the  garb  of  the  supernat- 
ural, marvelous,  and  miraculous.  More  yet:  the  charac- 
ters of  the  actors,  which  in  Paul's  epistles  stand  out  in 
such  bold  relief,  how  indistinct  and  unnatural  they  are 
rendered  in  the  Acts  !  Science  could  not  be  in  doubt. 
While  Paul's  epistles  decidedly  bear  the  stamp  of  truth 
and  reality,  just  as  decidedly  do  the  Acts  bear  the  stamp 
of  a  fictitious  and  artificial  narration,  made  up  for  certain 
purposes. 

Every  careful  reader  will  at  once  observe  that  the 
Acts  are  divided  into  two  distinct  parts;  the  first  (chap- 
ters i.-xiii.)  having  Peter  for  its  hero,  and  the  second 


38  THE    ACTS. 

^chapters  xiii.-xxviii.),  Paul.  All  the  wonders  ascribed 
to  Peter  in  the  first  part  are  repeated  in  the  second  in 
a  somewhat  different  way,  and  ascribed  to  Paul.  Peter, 
who,  according  to  Paul's  epistles,  is  afraid  to  keep  com- 
pany with  the  heathen  (Gal.  ii.  12),  and  who,  according 
to  the  compromise  (ibid.  8,  9)  was  to  have  the  apostleship 
unto  circumcision,  is  made  the  apostle  of  the  G-entiles 
(Acts  xv.  7).  He  and  James,  whose  followers  caused 
Paul  so  much  trouble  in  Antioch,  all  at  once  become  the 
defenders  of  Paul's  doctrine  (Acts  xv.  8-22),  which,  it 
is  true,  is  not  stated  with  the  harsh  and  cutting  distinct- 
ness of  Paul's  epistles,  but  gracefully  makes  the  conces- 
sion, that  the  heathen  converts  "  should  abstain  from 
pollution  of  idols  and  from  fornication  and  from  things 
strangled  and  from  blood  "  (Acts  xv.  20,  29)  ;  that  is  to 
say,  should  observe  all  those  laws  which  the  so-called 
"  stranger  of  the  gate  "  had  to  observe  among  the  Jews. 
On  the  other  hand,  Paul's  unyielding  character  and 
combativeness,  his  feeling  of  superiority  visible  in  every 
word  of  his  epistles,  have  entirely  vanished.  Paul  (Gal. 
i.  11-12)  says:  "But  I  certify  you,  brethren,  that  the 
Gospel  which  was  preached  of  me  is  not  after  man. 
For  I  neither  received  it  of  man,  neither  was  I  taught 

'  o 

it,  but  by  the  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ."  (Ibid.  15-18) : 
"  But  when  it  pleased  God  .  .  .To  reveal  his  Son  in 
me  that  I  might  preach  him  among  the  heathen ;  im- 
mediately I  conferred  not  with  flesh  and  blood :  neither 
went  I  up  to  Jerusalem  to  them  which  were  apostles 
before  me,"  etc.  (Gal.  ii.  5-6) :  "  To  whom  [the  original 
apostles]  we  gave  place  by  subjection,  no,  not  for  an 
hour,  that  the  truth  of  the  Gospel  might  continue  with 
you.  But  of  those,  who  seemed  to  be  somewhat,  what- 
soever they  were,  it  makes  no  matter  to  me:  God  ac- 


THE    ACTS.  39 

cepteth  no  man's  person  ;  for  they  who  seemed  to  be 
somewhat,  in  conference  added  nothing  to  me."  This 
same  Paul  is  represented  in  the  Acts  as  humbly  and 
meekly  seeking  their  company,  and  is  very  glad  to  be 
introduced  to  them  by  Barnabas,  his  sub-apostle  (Acts, 
ix.  26-27) :  "  And  when  Saul  had  come  to  Jerusalem,  he 
assayed  to  join  himself  to  the  disciples  ;  but  they  were 
all  afraid  of  him,  and  believed  not  that  he  was  a  disci- 
ple. But  Barnabas  took  him  and  brought  him  to  the 
apostles,  and  declared  unto  them  how  he  had  seen  the 
Lord  in  the  way."  Paul,  who  firmly  withstood  the  de- 
mand of  the  Jew -Christians  to  have  his  companion  Titus 
circumcised  ;  who  gloried  that  the  other  apostles,  see- 
ing his  success,  had  to  yield  to  him  (Gal.  ii.  3-9),  is  made 
meekly  to  submit  to  the  demands  of  the  conference  ;  and, 
by  a  kind  of  dissimulation,  to  pacify  the  cries  of  the 
people  (Acts.  xxi.  18-26). 

It  is  evident  that  such  an  intentional  transformation 
of  characters  can  only  have  been  undertaken  to  serve 
certain  purposes,  which  we  now  perfectly  understand- 
It  is  this:  ever  since  Paul  had  commenced  his  mission 
to  the  heathen,  with  declaring  "  the  law  "  [i.e.,  Judaism] 
not  only  as  supplanted,  but  as  adverse  to  what  he  con- 
ceived Christianity  to  be,  the  original  apostles  stood 
aghast ;  there  was  nothing  which  could  bridge  the  gulf 
between  their  Christianity  as  received  from  Jesus,  and 
that  as  thought  by  Paul.  Paul's  immense  success  with 
the  Gentiles,  however,  commanded  respect,  and  gained 
him  toleration  with  the  moderates.  But  the  extremists 
hated  him  with  the  most  bitter  hatred,  and  ascribed  to 
him  the  worst  that  they  could  think  of  (we  have  an  exam- 
ple of  this  spirit  in  the  Kevelations).  Epithets  were  given 
to  him  like  Balaam,  sorcerer,  corrupter ;  travesties  were 


40  THE   ACTS. 

fabricated  to  make  him  hateful  and  ridiculous,  of  which 
the  best  known  was  that,  where  Paul  appears  in  the 
guise  of  the  Samaritan  sorcerer  Simon.  It  is  a  whole 
romance  which  finally  tells  how  Simon  offers  to  Peter 
many  treasures,  as  a  bribe  to  receive  him  among  the 
apostles,  but  is  put  to  shame  by  Peter.  Everybody 
can  here  recognize  Paul,  who,  like  the  Samaritans,  was 
teaching  a  religion  half  Jewish  and  half  heathenish; 
whose  miracles  were  but  sorcery  ;  and  who  brought  rich 
gifts  to  Jerusalem  from  his  converted  heathens,  which, 
instead  of  being  gratefully  received,  were  rejected. 

This  anti-Pauline  party  was  powerful  during  the  first 
century  after  Jesus,  and  penetrated  even  into  the 
churches  founded  by  Paul  himself.  But  after  the  de- 
struction of  the  temple  and  Jerusalem,  when  the  Jew- 
Christians  gave  up  their  hopes  and  expectations  of  seeing 
Jerusalem,  the  capital  of  the  world,  to  which  Jesus  was 
to  come  down  with  the  clouds  of  heaven,  and  reign  for- 
ever over  both  Jews  and  Gentiles ;  when  the  conversion 
of  all  the  Jews  was  to  be  given  up  as  hopeless,  while  so 
many  heathen  were  joining  :  there  began  a  reaction,  and 
the  Pauline  doctrine  came  into  ascendancy,  the  more  the 
Jew-Christian  influence  declined. 

Still,  a  party  does  not  die  out  in  a  day,  especially  a 
religious  party.  A  compromise  was  to  be  made,  and 
this  compromise  was  accomplished  in  a  remarkably  skill- 
ful manner  by  the  author  of  the  Acts.  According  to  his 
representation  of  the  past  (he  wrote  at  the  beginning  of 
the  second  century  about  110  A.C.),  not  only  Paul  but 
Peter,  the  representative  of  Jew-Christianity,  was  like- 
wise the  apostle  of  the  heathen ;  not  only  Paul;  but 
Peter  likewise,  receives  the  revelation  of  the  abolition 
of  the  law,  and  the  election  of  the  heathen  (Acts  x). 


THE   ACTS.  41 

Both  are  made  of  equal  importance  ;  to  both  the  same 
miracles  are  ascribed ;  as  friends  and  brothers  they 
now  go  hand  in  hand ;  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  soon 
all  of  the  more  important  churches  boast  of  being 
founded  by  both  these  leading  apostles,  Peter  and  Paul. 
Their  dispute  in  Antioch  is  entirely  omitted,  and  in  its 
place  a  dispute,  which  Paul  is  said  to  have  had  with 
Barnabas,  his  most  faithful  follower,  is  inserted  (Acts 
xv.  39).  The  current  story  of  the  Samaritan  sorcerer 
Simon,  whom  Peter  punishes,  is  told  of  another  Simon, 
and  introduced  (Acts  viii.  13-24)  before  Paul  enters  the 
arena.  The  Jew- Christians  could  now  be  satisfied ;  their 
own  apostle  had  stood  up  for  the  doctrines  they  repud- 
iated, which  doctrines,  greatly  modified,  were  no  longer 
set  forth  with  that  opinion ativeness  as  in  Paul's  epistles ; 
neither  was  Paul  a  heretic,  but  a  true  apostle,  like  James 
and  John  and  Peter ;  why  should  they  not  yield  and  com- 
bine with  the  Paulines  ?  There  is  no  jarring,  no  strife, 
no  contention  between  these  apostles ;  there  is  nothing 
but  harmony  and  brotherhood,  and — the  foundation  of 
the  Catholic  Church  is  laid. 

The  secret  of  all  the  contradictions  between  Paul's 
epistles  and  the  Acts  is  disclosed.  We  now  clearly  see 
that  only  from  Paul's  epistles  can  we  learn  the  his- 
torical facts ;  but  on  this  account  we  shall  by  no  means 
ill-humoredly  call  the  author  of  the  Acts  a  falsifier  of  his- 
tory ;  his  purpose  was  not  to  write  history,  but  to  pacify, 
to  conciliate,  and  to  compromise.  How  difficult  and 
delicate  his  task  must  have  been  we  can  learn  from  the 
vehemence  of  the  spirit  that  opposed  him.  Fortunately 
the  writings  of  the  New  Testament  have  preserved  a 
specimen  of  this  spirit  in  the  Revelation. 


42  THE   REVELATION. 

But  what  can  we  make  out  of  the  Revelation?  A 
book  which  seems  rather  to  conceal  than  to  reveal  its 
real  meaning  and  intent.  Yet,  when  we  consider  the 
strange  fate  of  this  book  (which,  during  the  first  genera- 
tions after  its  appearance,  was  so  much  loved  and  so 
well  understood  by  its  numerous  readers,  while  later 
generations  misused  it  for  their  own  fantastic  dreams,  or 
treated  it  so  contemptuously — as,  for  instance,  Luther — 
that  they  almost  threw  it  out  of  the  canon),  we 
surmise  that,  if  the  key  to  its  secrets  were  found,  it 
would  again  become  both  intelligible  and  instructive. 
The  great  merit  of  modern  science  is  strikingly  shown 
in  the  ease  with  which  she  removed  the  seals  that  closed 
this  book  to  our  understanding.  As  long  as  the  Apoc- 
alypse' was  taken  for  a  revelation  of  the  future,  it  re- 
mained as  dark  and  unintelligible  as  the  future  itself ;  but 
as  soon  as  science  looked  within  its  pages  for  a  revela- 
tion of  its  own  time,  it  became  marvelously  clear  and 
instructive;  so  much  so  that  the  date  of  its  composition 
could  be  defined  within  a  few  months. 

When  the  author  of  the  Apocalypse  writes  (xvii.  9), 
"  And  here  is  the  mind  which  has  wisdom,"  he  surely 
did  not  think  of  modern  science ;  nevertheless,  this  is 
the  mind  which  has  the  wisdom  to  understand  him  when 
he  continues,  "  The  seven  heads  are  seven  mountains, 
on  which  the  woman  sitteth,"  that  this  woman  is  none 
else. but  Borne,  as  he  explains  (xvii.  18):  "And  the 
woman  whom  thou  sawest  is  that  great  city  which  reign- 
eth  over  the  kings  of  the  earth."  It  is  Home  during  the 
first  persecution  of  the  Christians  under  Nero  in  the 
year  64  A.C.,  when  he  says  (xvii.  6) :  "  And  I  saw  the 
woman  drunken  with  the  blood  of  the  saints  and  of 
the  martyrs  of  Jesus."  It  is  Rome  at  the  time  of  Galba 


THE   REVELATION.  43 

when  he  says  (xvii.  10) :  "  And  there  are  seven  kings ; 
five  are  fallen,  and  one  is,  and  the  other  is  not  yet  come" 
(Augustus,  Tiberius,  Caius,  Claudius,  Nero,  Galba,  Yes- 
pasianus).  He  writes  during  the  time  of  Galba,  who 
reigned  from  July,  68  to  January,  69,  but  he  also 
knows  Galba's  successor  Yespasianus,  whom  he  ex- 
pects to  reign  but  a  short  time,  viz.,  three  years  and  a 
half;  then  Nero,  his  Antichrist,  will  return  to  usher  in 
the  glory  and  kingdom  of  Christ.  He  writes  immedi- 
ately before  the  great  catastrophe  in  the  history  of 
Israel.  The  country  of  Palestine  was  subdued  and 
devastated  by  the  Romans ;  Jerusalem  alone  was  left, 
and  this  also  was  daily  threatened  with  the  iinal  blow 
from  the  rude  conqueror's  hand.  The  Jew-Christians 
had  fled  at  the  approaching  danger  over  the  Jordan,  but 
the  author  of  the  Apocalypse,  in  his  own  way,  partici- 
pates in  the  wild  enthusiasm  and  extravagant  hopes  of 
the  heroic  defenders  of  Jerusalem,  who,  to  the  very  last, 
expected  to  see  their  holy  city,  or  at  least  the  temple, 
miraculously  saved  from  the  hands  of  the  Gentiles.  The 
author  of  the  Apocalypse  also  has  implicit  trust  in  the 
miraculous  preservation  of  the  holy  city  and  the  temple. 
The  key  to  the  book  is  given  (xiii.  18)  where  it  is  said  : 
"Let  him  that  has  understanding  count  the  number  of 
the  beast;  for  it  is  the  number  of  a  man,  and  his  num- 
ber is  six  hundred  threescore  and  six."  According  to 
the  custom  of  his  days,  the  author  of  the  Apocalypse  uses 
the  letters  in  their  numerical  value,  and  summing  up  the 
numerical  value  of  the  Greek  letters  contained  in  "  Caesar 
Nero"  we  get  six  hundred  and  sixty-six.  This  Nero, 
his  Antichrist,  is  the  hero  of  his  poem.  It  is  well 
known  that  the  belief  was  generally  entertained  by  the 
common  people  that  Nero,  who  was  murdered  in  a 


44  THE  .  REVELATION. 

revolt  of  his  indignant  people,  had  escaped  to  the  Par- 
thians  and  would  soon  return  to  take  vengeance  on  his 
rebellious  Romans.     According  to  this  fable,  which  the 
author  of  the  Apocalypse  accepts  as  undoubtedly  true, 
he  has  his  visions  of  Nero  who  (xvii.  8)  "  was  and  is 
not,  and  yet  is  "  (xvii.  11)  :   "  And  the  beast  that  was 
and  is  not,  even  he  is  the  eighth  [king]  and  is  of  the 
seven."     His  theory  is :  Nero  is  not  dead,  but  gone  to 
the  ten  kings  of  the   Parthians,  who  hate  the  whore; 
with  these  ten  kings  he  will  soon  return,  assume  again 
the  Roman  empire,  and  take  vengeance  on  Rome  (xvii. 
16)  :  "  And  the  ten  horns  which  thou  sawest  upon  the 
beast,  these  shall  hate  the  whore,  and  shall  make  her 
desolate  and  naked,  and  shall  eat  her  flesh,  and  burn 
her  with  fire."     After  the  destruction  of  Rome  (chapter 
xviii.),  Nero,  i.e.,  Antichrist,  will  make  war  against  the 
holy   city  Jerusalem;    but   the   heavens   open,    Christ 
appears  with  his  heavenly  hosts,  Antichrist  is    thrown 
into  the  bottomless  pit,  and  the  millennium  begins  (chap- 
ter xix).     The  righteous,  i.e.,  those  who  suffered   and 
died  for  the  name  of  Jesus,  will  be  resurrected  and  live 
forever.     After  a  thousand  years  Antichrist  will  again 
break  loose  for  a  little  while,  and,  with  Gog  and  Magog 
(i.e.,  the  German  tribes),  make  war  against  the  saints. 
But  fire  will  come  down  from  heaven  and  destroy  his 
hosts.     Then  a  general  resurrection  will  take  place,  the 
new  heaven  and  the  new  earth  will  be  founded,  the  new 
Jerusalem  with  all  its  splendor  will  come  down  from 
heaven,  and  God  will  reign  and  be  its  everlasting  sun 
according  to  Isaiah  (Ix.  19-21). 

The  aim  and  object  of  the  Revelation  is  to  give  comfort 
and  assurance  to  the  believers  who,  in  the  midst  of  the 
hardships  that  had  come  over  them  on  account  of  the 


THE    REVELATION.  45 

persecutions  under  Nero,  almost  despaired  (ii.  26;  iii. 
21;  xiv.  12-13).  For  their  faithful  endurance  he  prom- 
ises the  reward  which  is  soon  to  come,  if  they  only  per- 
severe (xx.  4  ;  xxii.  12). 

We  know  that  of  all  his  prophecies  not  one  was  ful- 
filled :  instead  of  Nero,  Titus  was  the  eighth  king ;  instead 
of  the  expected  miraculous  salvation,  it  was  the  utter 
destruction  of  Jerusalem  which  history  had  to  record ; 
Jerusalem  became  not  the  capital  of  the  world,  hut  was 
leveled  to  the  ground ;  nor  was  Rome  leveled  to  the 
ground,  but  retained  her  government  over  the  world. 
Christianity,  indeed,  persevered,  and  by  its  perseverance 
became  the  great  ruling  power  of  the  world,  without, 
however,  introducing  the  celestial  Jerusalem,  the  em- 
pire of  peace,  love,  and  good-will.  Nevertheless,  these 
prophecies  are  very  instructive,  in  so  far  as  they  show 
us  the  hopes  and  expectations  of  the  early  Christians 
and  the  scope  of  their  faith.  The  author  is  apparently 
a  Jew-Christian,  very  familiar  with  the  Jewish  scrip- 
tures and  Jewish  traditions  :  his  whole  imagery  is  taken 
from  the  prophets,  the  Psalms,  and  the  book  of  Daniel, 
only  it  is  more  extravagant  and  flighty,  as  that  of  every 
imitator.  But  still  more  instructive  is  the  vigorous  war- 
fare which  he  wages  against  Paul  and  his  adherents. 
The  eradication  of  the  Pauline  errors  is  so  much  at  his 
heart  that  he  opens  his  revelation  with  an  address  to 
the  seven  principal  churches  to  warn  them  against  this 
heresy  (ii.  2).  He  lauds  the  church  of  Ephesus  because 
she  cannot  bear  those  who  are  evil ;  "and  thou  hast 
tried  them  which  say  they  are  apostles,  and  are  not,  and 
hast  found  them  liars,"  which  corresponds  to  I.  Cor. 
ix.  2,  where  Paul  says,  "  If  I  be  not  an  apostle  unto 
others,  yet  doubtless  I  am  to  you,"  and  to  1  Cor.  xvi. 


46  THE    KEVELATION. 

9,  where  he  says  of  Ephesus,  "  there  are  many  adversa- 
ries." Paul's  permission  to  his  converts  (I.  Cor.  x.  25  ff.) 
to  eat  of  the  sacrifices  of  idols  and  whatever  is  sold  in  the 
shambles,  he  calls  (Rev.  ii.  14)  the  doctrine  of  Balaam, 
who  taught  Balak  to  cast  a  stumbling-block  before 
the  children  of  Israel ;  and  (ii.  20)  Paul  is  likened  to 
"  that  woman  Jezebel,  which  calleth  herself  a  proph- 
etess, to  teach  and  to  seduce  my  servants  to  commit 
fornication,  and  to  eat  things  sacrificed  unto  idols, 
etc.  The  followers  of  this  Balaam,  i.e.,  Paul,  who  are 
called  Nicolaitanes  (for  Nicolaus  is  but  the  Greek  trans- 
lation of  the  Hebrew  Balaam ;  both  mean  destroyer  or 
corrupter  of  the  people),  are  hateful  to  his  soul  (2  Cor.  vi. 
15) ;  they  are  of  the  synagogue  of  Satan,  and  not  Jews ; 
for  to  the  author  of  the  Apocalypse  a  true  Jew  is  syn- 
onymous with  a  true  Christian  (ii.  9) :  "I  know  the 
blasphemy  of  those  which  say  they  are  Jews,  and  are 
not,  but  are  the  synagogue  of  Satan"  (iii.  9)  :  "  Behold, 
I  will  make  them  of  the  synagogue  of  Satan,  which  say 
they  are  Jews,  and  are  not,  but  do  lie."  Among 
the  names  of  the  twelve  apostles  engraved  on  the  foun- 
dation of  his  new  Jerusalem  the  name  of  Paul  has  no 
place  (xxi.  14).  The  false  prophet  who  worships  the  em- 
pire of  Nero,  and  with  him  is  "  cast  alive  into  a  lake  of 
fire  burning  with  brimstone  "  (xvi.  13  ;  xix.  20  ;  xx.  10), 
has  many  traits  of  Paul,  who  is  said  "  to  work  miracles 
by  the  spirit  of  devils,  and  going  forth  unto  the  kings  of 
the  earth  and  of  the  whole  world  to  gather  them  to  the 
battle  of  that  great  day  of  God  Almighty"  (xvi.  14). 
The  author  of  the  Apocalypse  firmly  believes  that  the 
Messiah  will  come  especially  for  the  twelve  tribes  of 
Israel  (vii.  4  ff.),  and  then  (vii.  9)  for  the  promiscuous 
crowd  of  all  the  other  nations.  His  Messiah  is  that 


THE    REVELATION.  47 

of  the  Jewish  tradition  (Babylonian  Talmud,  Pesachim 
54,  a  /  Nedarim  39,  £),  whose  name  belongs  to  the  seven 
things  created  before  the  world,  and  is  stored  away  for 
the  appointed  time,  therefore  the  author  of  the  Apoc- 
alypse speaks  (iii.  12)  "  of  the  new  name  that  will  be 
given  to  the  Messiah  "  (xix.  12):  "  it  is  the  name  that  no 
man  knew  but  himself;"  and,  according  to  the  rabbini- 
cal explanation  of  Psalrn  Ixxii.  17,  "  his  name  shall  be 
forever" ;  the  author  of  the  Apocalypse  calls  his 
Messiah  the  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  beginning  and  the 
ending.  He  is  proud  of  being  a  Jew ;  his  Judaism  is 
only  distinguished  by  the  belief  in  Jesus  as  the  Messiah, 
who  has  come,  died,  risen  from  the  dead  as  the  first  of 
all  men,  and  who  will  soon  reappear,  when  the  world 
that  is  to  come  will  commence. 

Thus  the  book  of  Revelation  which,  next  to  the 
epistles  of  Paul,  is  the  oldest  document  of  Christianity. 
It  represents  that  Christianity  which  was  taught  by  the 
immediate  followers  and  personal  disciples  of  Jesus,  who 
were  called  Jew-Christians  because  they  scrupulously 
observed  all  the  laws  and  customs  of  the  Jews,  in  con- 
tradistinction to  the  Paulines,  who  disregarded  the 
Tewish  laws.  Their  prerogative  of  being  the  true  dis- 
feiples  of  Jesus  made  the  Jew-Christians  during  the  first 
generations  too  strong  and  powerful  for  Paul  and  his 
doctrines.  In  the  course  of  time,  however,  various  cir- 
cumstances so  worked  together  that  they  had  to  submit. 
The  destruction  of  Jerusalem  and  the  temple  was  a 
severe  shock  to  their  hopes  and  doctrines;  they  had  lost 
their  spiritual  center,  and,  from  the  very  beginning  but 
few  in  numbers,  they  could  no  longer  successfully  contend 
against  the  numerous  Paulines,  especially  when  Gnos- 
ticism also  combined  with  the  Paulines  to  oppose  them. 


4:8  GNOSTICISM. 

What  was  Gnosticism  ?  It  was  this :  the  faith  in  the 
Messiah  who  had  come  found  more  numerous  adherents 
among  the  Jews  outside  of  Palestine  than  in  Palestine. 
The  Jews  in  Palestine,  oppressed  by  the  Roman  yoke 
and  struggling  to  maintain  their  commonwealth,  winch 
was  crumbling  to  pieces  under  the  continued  batterings 
of  the  relentless  aggressor,  could  not  believe  that  the 
Messiah,  the  universal  deliverer,  had  come,  though  they 
expected  him  hourly.  What  they  hoped  of  the  Messiah 
had  not  come  to  pass ;  they  had  to  help  themselves  as 
best  they  could,  and  not  give  way  to  the  vain  dream  that 
all  that  was  to  be  expected  was  done  and  accomplished. 
It  was  different  with  the  many  Jews  scattered  through- 
out Asia,  Egypt,  Greece ;  in  fact,  through  the  whole 
Roman  empire.  These  always  looked  to  Jerusalem  and 
Palestine  with  great  concern,  but  in  the  gigantic  strug- 
gle of  their  Palestinian  brethren  against  Rome  they 
were  mere  lookers-on ;  they  were  outside  of  the  storm, 
and  in  comparative  sunshine;  with  them  the  belief  "  the 
Messiah  has  come  "  was  not  so  inconsistent  with  reality 
as  in  Palestine.  The  glowing  accounts  which  enthus- 
iastic admirers  brought  to  them,  from  their  beloved 
Palestine,  of  the  many  miracles  and  wonders  performed 
by  the  Messiah  were  by  far  more  effective  than  the 
dull,  commonplace  facts  which  the  Palestinians  them- 
selves had  witnessed,  and  which,  almost  unobserved, 
had  occurred  in  their  troubled  life.  All  this,  com- 
bined with  the  obscure  perception  of  Judaism  prev- 
alent among  the  foreign-born  Jews,  especially  those  of 
Egypt  and  Asia  Minor,  was  a  powerful  motive  for  their 
more  ready  acceptance  of  the  new  faith.  For  a  long 
time  anterior  to  this  period,  the  foreign  Jews  had  lost 
the  knowledge  ol  the  Hebrew  language,  and  knew  their 


GNOSTICISM.  49 

holy  writings  only  from  the  Greek  translation,  the  so- 
called  Septuagint ;  they  were,  furthermore,  strongly 
imbued  with  the  prevailing  Greek  philosophy,  which 
more  or  less  influenced  their  Judaism.  The  main  fea- 
ture of  this  modified  Greek  Judaism  was,  that  they 
transgressed  the  sublime  behest,  "  Thou  shalt  make  unto 
thee  no  image  "  (of  God).  It  is  true,  their  image  was 
not  material,  for  this  their  culture  was  too  far  advanced, 
but  they  had  a  spiritual  image  of  God  which  they  called 
"  Logos."  Their  conception  was,  that  God  is  too  ex- 
alted above  this  material  and  physical  world  to  have 
any  connection  with  it.  The  Logos,  an  emanation  of 
God,  or,  as  Philo,  the  highest  representative  of  this  phil- 
osophy, poetically  calls  it,  the  "  Monogenes "  the  only 
begotten  of  God,  was  he  who  created  this  world  and 
preserves  it.  With  Philo  the  Logos  is  but  an  abstract 
idea  which  finds  its  analogy  in  the  anthropomorphic 
Scripture  expression  "  word,  or  glory  of  God ;"  but  very 
soon  it  was  clothed  with  a  personality  and  became  a 
being  of  itself. 

This  Alexandrian  mysticism  had  prepared  the  ground 
for  the  reception  of  the  new  idea  "  the  Messiah  has 
come,"  and  very  soon  impregnated  it  with  its  own  pe- 
culiarities. According  to  the  traditions,  the  Messiah 
was  to  bring  about  or  create  a  new  world ;  then,  of 
course,  he  must  be  the  Logos  by  whom  worlds  are  cre- 
ated. If  this  be  so,  the  Messiah  cannot  be  the  Branch 
out  of  the  house  of  David ;  he  cannot  be  the  Son  of  Man 
— he  is  the  Son  of  God,  and,  though  born  of  a  human 
mother,  he  was  begotten  of  God.  Thus  he  came  into 
this  world ;  but  how  did  he  get  out  of  it  ?  According 
to  the  Jewish  conception,  the  Messiah  was  but  a  man 
with  higher  gifts  and  endowments,  a  means  in  the  hand 


50  GNOSTICISM. 

of  God  for  the  salvation  of  his  people  and  the  world ;  as 
such  he  could  die,  rise  again,  and  with  his  resurrection 
introduse  the  new  world  over  which  he  was  to  rule.  But 
how,  according  to  this  Gnostic  idea,  can  a  divine  spirit  be 
put  to  death  by  the  hand  of  man  ?  Of  course  this  is  im- 
possible ;  but  he  can  give  himself  as  a  sacrifice.  This  he 
did,  and  had  to  do ;  for  the  old  world,  and  all  mankind, 
were  corrupted,  and  had  to  perish.  If  this  world  was 
corrupted,  the  germ  of  corruption  must  have  existed  in 
the  first  Adam ;  for,  according  to  this  doctrine  of 
emanation,  corruption  can  come  only  from  a  corrupt 
being.  Adam  did  sin,  and  by  his  sin  all  mankind  has 
fallen,  is  suffering,  and  was  to  have  perished.  But  did 
it  perish  ?  No,  it  did  not.  It  did  not  perish  for  the 
reason  only  that  the  Logos,  the  creator  of  the  first 
Adam  and  all  mankind,  gave  himself  up  as  a  sacrifice. 
Thereby  everything  necessary  was  done ;  by  his  suffer- 
ing he  took  away  the  sin  from  all  who  believe  in  him ; 
there  is  nothing  further  to  be  expected ;  the  plan  of  sal- 
vation is  completed. 

This  was  Gnosticism,  just  as  much  opposed  to  the  be- 
lief of  the  Jew-Christians  and  the  Paulines  as  to  that  of 
the  Jews.  For  the  Jew-Christians  and  Paulines,  much 
as  they  differed  in  regard  to  the  continued  validity  of 
the  law,  both  agreed  in  this :  that  they  surely  expected 
to  see  the  resurrected  Christ  coming  down  with  the 
clouds  of  heaven  to  usher  in  the  new  world,  over  which 
he  was  to  rule  supreme  for  evermore,  while  the  Gnostics 
had  no  room  in  their  philosophy  for  a  second  descent  of 
the  Logos. 

New  contentions  and  new  struggles  arose,  of  which  the 
New  Testament  has  preserved  some  records  in  the  writ- 
ings ascribed  to  the  Apostle  John,  viz.:  the  fourth  Gospel 


ST.    JOHN.  51 

mid  the  three  epistles  of  John.  But  the  Apocalypse, 
breathing  a  spirit  diametrically  opposed  to  that  of  the 
fourth  Gospel  and  the  three  epistles  of  John,  is  like- 
wise ascribed  to  John,  the  apostle.  How  are  we  to  de- 
cide between  these  contradictory  claims?  Simply  thus: 
Since  it  appears  very  probable  that  the  Apocalypse, 
written  about  69  A.C.,  if  not  the  work  of  John — who 
is  very  characteristically  described  (Mark  iii.  17)  as  "the 
thunderer  " — is  surely  the  work  of  one  of  his  immedi- 
ate disciples,  it  is  impossible  that  the  fourth  Gospel, 
written  not  before  160  A.  C.  or  170  A.  C.  (for  it  was 
entirely  unknown  before  that  time)  can  have  the  same 
author,  even  if  the  divergence  of  their  views  and  doc- 
trines were  not  as  decided  and  irreconcilable  as  indeed 
it  is.  The  motive  that  induced  the  writer  of  the  fourth 
Gospel  to  assume  the  name  of  the  Apostle  John  is  very 
obvious.  Of  the  three  apostles,  James,  John,  and  Peter, 
those  "  pillars  of  the  early  Church,"  James  was  known 
as  the  head  of  the  church  in  Jerusalem,  and  Peter  as 
the  "apostle  unto  circumcision,"  that  is,  of  Jew-Chris- 
tianity. Of  John  the  succeeding  generations  knew 
very  little,  and  legend  soon  metamorphosed  his  charac- 
ter, and  surrounded  him  with  a  halo  of  wonders  and 
miracles.  It  was  said  that  John  reached  a  wonderful 
old  age,  the  latter  part  of  which  he  spent  in  Ephesus; 
there  he  was  zealously  working  for  the  propagation  of 
Christianity.  Occupied  in  continual  circuits,  he  organ- 
ized congregations,  installed  priests,  and  consecrated 
bishops.  Of  the  many  wonderful  things  which  he  is 
said  to  have  performed  the  best  known  are :  how  he 
converted  a  noble  young  heathen,  and  afterward  saved 
him  a  second  time  from  perdition,  when  he  had  joined  a 
robber  band;  how  he  was  thrown  into  boiling  oil,  at  the 


52  THE   GOSPEL   ACCORDING   TO   JOHN. 

command  of  a  Roman  emperor,  but  emerged  from  this 
fiery  baptism  with  renewed  strength  and  vigor ;  how  he 
was  banished  to  the  Isle  of  Patrnos,  where  he  received 
his  revelation,  but  returned  again  to  Ephesus  to  resume 
his  old  labors.  At  last  he  was  so  old  that  he  could  no 
longer  walk,  and  he  was  carried  to  the  church,  where  his 
sermons  always  consisted  of  the  same  few  words,  "  Lit- 
tle children,  love  each  other."  He  lived  so  long  that  it 
was  said  he  could  not  die  nntil  Jesus  should  reappear 
(John  xxi.  22).  Isidorus  Hispalensis  tells  us  that  when 
John  felt  his  time  to  be  come,  he  ordered  a  grave  to  be 
dug,  took  leave  solemnly  of  his  followers  and  disciples, 
and  descended  into  it.  Augustine  knew  that  he  was 
only  sleeping  there,  waiting  for  the  second  advent  of 
Christ,  which  was  proved  by  the  perpetual  heaving  of  the 
sod  over  his  grave,  caused  by  the  drawing  of  his  breath. 
This  transfigured  John  could  easily  be  made  a  successful 
rival  of  James  and  Peter,  and  the  writer  of  the  fourth 
Gospel  declares  him  very  ostentatiously  (xxi.  15-22)  to  be 
the  favorite  disciple  of  Jesus,  being  preferred  to  Peter. 
At  the  same  time  there  was  too  little  known  of  John 
to  exclude  the  possibility  of  ascribing  to  him  the  pecul- 
iar Gnostic  doctrines  which  the  writer  of  the  fourth 
Gospel  wishes  to  set  forth.  The  first  sentence  is  the 
tenor  of  the  whole  book:  "In  the  beginning  was  the 
Logos,  and  the  Logos  was  with  God,  and  the  Logos  was 
God."  Jesus  is  no  longer  a  man,  but  God  ;  he  does  not 
die,  but  voluntarily  lays  down  his  life  to  take  it  again 
(x.  15-18).  The  historical  fact  that  Jesus  came  of  the 
Jews,  that  "  salvation  is  of  the  Jews "  (iv.  22),  cannot 
be  denied,  but  it  is  merely  accidental.  To  the  writer 
of  the  fourth  Gospel,  Judaism  is  something  entirely 
foreign ;  of  the  Jewish  laws  and  festivals  Jesus  contin- 


THE   GOSPEL   ACCORDING   TO   JOHN.  53 

ually  speaks  as  your  laws,  your  passover  (vii.  19-22 ; 
viii.  17;  x.  34).  The  separation  of  Christianity  from 
Judaism  is  complete,  and  the  rancor  at  the  persistent 
unbelief  of  the  Jews  is  everywhere  apparent.  Jesus' 
activity  here  on  earth,  therefore,  very  fitly  closes  with  a 
strong  rebuke  of  this  confirmed  unbelief  (xii.  37  if.)  of  the 
Jews,  who  are  unceremoniously  called  the  children  of 
the  devil  (viii.  44),  who  will  not  receive  the  truth  ;  while 
the  Samaritans  and  other  Gentiles  willingly  flock  to 
Jesus  (iv.  30).  The  real  purpose  of  the  book  is  to  set 
forth  the  new  dogmas  which  Gnosticism  had  engrafted 
upon  young  Christianity.  To  accomplish  this  more 
effectually  it  seemed  most  advantageous  to  cast  them 
into  the  shape  of  a  fictitious  narrative  of  the  life  of  Je- 
sus, into  which  all  the  stories  of  the  current  tradition 
which  suited  the  purpose  were  taken  up ;  others  were 
made  more  suitable  or  omitted  entirely.  As  the  book 
commences  with  the  new  doctrine  of  the  Logos,  so  does 
it  conclude  (xviii.  36)  with  the  announcement  of  Jesus 
which  is  nowhere  else  to  be  found,  "My  kingdom  is  not 
of  this  world " ;  and,  very  significantly,  Jesus  expires 
(xix.  30)  with  "Tetelestai!" — it  is  finished — the  old  is 
accomplished,  the  new  world  has  commenced. 

As  the  Acts  endeavor  to  lay  the  foundation  for  a 
Catholic  Church,  so  does  the  fourth  Gospel  endeavor  to 
establish  the  Christian  dogmas.  Both  are  valuable 
documents  for  a  better  knowledge  of  the  first  genera- 
tions after  Jesus,  but  neither  is  authentic  in  regard  to 
the  life  of  Jesus 

By  this  time  the  reader  will  have  perceived  that  the 
perfect  harmony  and  fraternal  feeling  generally  supposed 
to  have  existed  between  the  founders  and  early  propaga- 
tors of  Christianity  are  chimeras  which  must  be  assigned 


54:  EFISTLE    OF    JAMES. 

to  the  place  where  they  properly  belong — that  of  myth- 
ology. The  truth  which  may  be  learned  even  from 
those  records  which  are  in  everybody's  hands — the  New 
Testament  writings — is,  that  there  were  lively  conten- 
tions, bitter  enmities,  and  intense  hatreds  between  the 
three  great  parties,  the  Jew-Christians,  the  Paulines,  and 
the  Gnostics,  of  whom  each  claimed  to  be  in  possession 
of  the  only  pure  and  undefiled  truth  of  Christianity. 
But  Christianity  was  yet  in  its  infancy,  had  yet  to  battle 
for  existence,  and  all  parties  soon  felt  the  truth  that  "a 
house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand."  The  prose- 
cutions of  early  Christianity  also  proved  very  salutary  ; 
they  were  like  the  storms  which  compel  the  young  tree 
to  concentrate  all  its  forces  from  within  and  try  to  strike 
a  deeper  root ;  they  were  powerful  incentives  to  bring 
the  various  parties  closer  together.  The  extremes  (the 
Ebionites  on  the  side  of  the  Jew-Christians,  the  Montan- 
ists  on  the  side  of  the  Paulines  and  Gnostics)  were  grad- 
ually left  behind,  while  the  intermediate  stages  tended  to 
concentrate  on  a  common  platform,  the  planks  of  which 
were  carefully  selected  from  all  parties,  so  that  each  could 
easily  imagine  that  it  stood  on  its  own  principles.  That 
this  could  not  have  been  achieved  in  one  generation  is 
natural;  the  wide  distance  which  separated  these  par- 
ties had  to  be  traversed  step  by  step,  and  the  traces  of 
this  gradual  advance  toward  each  other  are  well  pre- 
served in  the  New  Testament  literature.  The  epistle  as- 
cribed to  James,  the  head  of  the  church  of  Jerusalem,  the 
highest  exponent  of  Jew-Christianity,  gives  us  a  striking 
instance.  The  author,  of  course,  is  a  very  pronounced 
Jew-Christian,  and  passionately  refutes  the  Pauline  doc- 
trine of  faith  and  not  works.  (James  ii.  14):  "What 
does  it  profit,  my  brethren,  though  a  man  say  he  has 


EPISTLES    OF    PETER.  55 

faith,  and  have  no  works  ?  Can  faith  save  him  ? "  Paul's 
argument  (Rom.  iv ;  Gal.  iii.  6  ff.),  by  which  he  labors 
to  show  that  it  was  Abraham's  belief  alone  that  was 
accounted  to  him  for  righteousness,  is  skillfully  refuted 
(James  ii.  20-23  ft'.):  "  But  wilt  tliou  know,  O  vain  man, 
that  faith  without  works  is  dead  ?  Was  not  Abraham, 
our  father,  justified  by  works  when  he  offered  Isaac,  his 
son,  upon  the  altar?  Seest  thou  how  faith  wrought  with 
his  works,  and  by  works  was  faith  made  perfect?"  Nev- 
ertheless, almost  involuntarily,  he  yields  to  Paul  in  so 
far  as  to  acknowledge  "  a  royal  law,"  "  a  perfect  law 
of  liberty"  distinguished  from  the  common  meaning  of 
"  the  law." 

More  decidedly  we  find  Jew-Christianity  giving  way 
to  Paulinism  in  the  epistles  ascribed  to  Peter,  also  an 
apostle  of  Jew-Christianity,  but  not  of  such  an  unyield- 
ing character  that  he  could  not  be  made  to  look  more 
favorably  upon  heathen  Christianity  than  James.  The 
scope  of  these  epistles  is  best  seen  from  I.  Peter  v.  12, 
where  it  is  stated  that  this  letter  was  sent  by  Silvanus, 
the  well-known  companion  of  Paul,  who  is  called  "  a 
faithful  brother";  furthermore,  the  object  of  this  epistle 
is  to  testify  that  they  (the  heathen)  are  standing  in  the 
true  grace  of  God.  It  was  written  at  a  time  when  cir- 
cumcision, so  obstinately  defended  against  Paul,  had  been 
given  up  by  Jew-Christianity,  and  was  no  longer  consid- 
ered obligatory  for  heathen  converts ;  baptism  was  now 
generally  acknowledged  as  sufficiently  effectual  to  re- 
move the  "  old  Adam."  This  could  be  conceded  to  the 
Paulines,  even  from  a  strictly  Jewish  standpoint,  as 
the  Jews  themselves,  under  certain  circumstances,  dis- 
pensed with  circumcision,  and  acknowledged  the  immer- 
sion of  a  convert  as  sufficient  to  introduce  him  into 


56          EPISTLES   TO   THE   EPHESIAKS    AND   COLOSSIAtfS. 

Judaism  (Talmud,  Yebamoth,  46  a  ;  Josephus,  Antiq., 
Book  xx.,  chap,  ii.,  sec.  4 ;  Bereshith  Kabbah,  chap.  46). 
The  author  of  I.  Peter,  therefore,  expressly  says  (iii.  21), 
"  even  baptism  does  also  now  save  us  by  the  resurrection 
of  Jesus  Christ."  Still  more  decidedly  leaning  toward 
Paulinism  is  the  second  epistle  of  Peter,  where  (iii.  15, 
16)  an  explicit  testimony  of  orthodoxy  is  given  to  "  the 
beloved  brother  Paul,"  and  it  is  intimated  that  those  doc- 
trines which  are  so  odious  to  Jew-Christianity  are  not  to 
be  ascribed  to  Paul,  but  to  the  ignorant  readers  of  his 
epistles.  Paul,  in  his  epistles,  speaks  of  the  very  same 
things  of  which  the  author  does,  but  there  are  in  Paul's 
epistles  "  some  things  hard  to  be  understood,  which  they 
that  are  unlearned  and  unstable  wrest,  as  they  do  also 
the  other  Scriptures,  unto  their  own  destruction." 

On  the  other  hand,  Paulinism  likewise  was  ready  to 
make  concessions,  and,  if  possible,  meet  half-way  its 
Jew-Christian  brethren.  That  the  Acts  very  successfully 
pursue  this  course,  we  have  already  seen.  The  author  did 
not  intend  to  write  the  history  of  the  past  generations ;  he 
intended  to  harmonize  all  the  discords  transmitted  from 
the  past  generations.  Not  with  the  same  effect,  though 
with  the  same  good-will,  do  the  authors  of  the  epistles 
to  the  Ephesians  and  Colossians,  which  are  ascribed  to 
Paul,  labor  for  the  same  cause.  Conciliation  and  unifica- 
tion of  those  who  are  separated  is  the  main  object  of 
these  epistles  (Eph.  iv.  14):  "That  we  henceforth  be 
no  more  children,  tossed  to  and  fro  and  carried  about 
with  every  wind  of  doctrine,  by  the  sleight  of  men  and 
cunning  craftiness  whereby  they  lie  in  wait  to  deceive." 
Paul's  Christology  is  accordingly  modified.  It  is  no 
longer  faith,  but  "  grace  which  saves  through  faith  (Eph. 
ii.  5-8).  Works  are  not  absolutely  rejected,  but  they 


EPISTLE   TO   THE    HEBl.'KWS.  57 

are  predestined  (Eph.  ii.  10) :  "  For  we  are  his  work- 
manship, created  in  Christ  Jesus  unto  good  works, 
which  God  hath  before  ordained  that  we  should  walk  in 
them."  Circumcision  is  abolished,  but  baptism  is  ac- 
knowledged as  necessary  to  symbolize  the  new  man 
(Col.  ii.  11,  12;  Eph.  ii  11  ft.,  etc.) 

More  outspoken  than  this  leaning  toward  Jew-Chris- 
tianity is  that  toward  Gnosticism  (Eph.  iii.  9  ;  Col.  i.  15, 
16);  and,  naturally,  Gnosticism  also  inclined  more  and 
more  toward  Paulinism,  of  which  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  gives  evidence.  The  author  of  this  epistle 
moves  entirely  within  the  Alexandrian  mysticism,  the 
strength  of  which  consists  in  allegorical  explanations  of 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  By  means  of  these  he  endeav- 
ors to  prove  Paul's  doctrine  of  the  abolition  of  the  law 
(Heb.  viii.  13) :  "  In  that  he  saith  (Jeremiah  xxxi.31  if.): 
a  new  covenant  [will  I  make  with  the  house  of  Israel], 
he  hath  made  the  first  old.  Now  that  which  decayeth 
and  waxeth  old  is  ready  to  vanish  away."  But  the  rea- 
son of  this  abolition  is  not  the  Pauline,  because  the  law 
is  a  curse  ;  it  is  the  Gnostic  one,  that,  because  the  Logos 
has  given  himself  as  a  sacrifice,  therefore  (Heb.  vii.  12), 
"  since  the  priesthood  has  been  changed,  there  is  made 
of  necessity  a  change  also  of  the  law."  The  differences 
between  Judaism  and  Christianity  are  not  irreconcilable. 
Judaism,  in  its  laws  and  institutions,  was  the  symbol  of 
Christianity  that  was  to  come.  Especially  was  this  the 
case  with  the  priesthood  ;  Christ  is  the  everlasting  high 
priest,  not  after  the  order  of  Aaron,  but  after  the  order 
of  Melchisedec  (Heb.  iv.  14 ;  v.  6 ;  vi.  20 ;  vii.  1  ff.) 
This  high  priest  has  given  himself  for  the  sins  of  those 
who  believe  in  him,  etc. 

This  work  of  conciliation   and  drawing  nearer  and 


58  SYNOPTIC    GOSPELS. 

nearer  together  from  all  sides  is  perceptible  throughout  all 
the  minor  writings  of  the  New  Testament.  And  how  is  it 
with  the  first  three,  the  so-culled  Synoptic,  Gospels,  which, 
setting  aside  the  many  variations  and  contradictions,  in 
the  main  give  the  same  account  of  the  life  of  Jesus  ? 
Let  us  see.  In  the  Gospel  of  Mark(xvi.  15, 16)  the  resur- 
rected Christ  announces  to  his  apostles,  "  Go  ye  into  all 
the  world  and  preach  the  Gospel  to  every  creature.  He 
that  believeth  and  is  baptized  shall  be  saved ;  but  he 
that  believeth  not  shall  be  dammed."  How  surprising  ! 
What  Paul,  who  never  saw  or  heard  Jes-us,  said  and  did, 
and  what  those  apostles  who  always  were  in  Jesus'  com- 
pany most  strenuously  opposed,  is  here  the  last  behest  of 
Jesus.  Belief  and  baptism,  not  the  works  of  the  law 
and  circumcision,  are  the  essentials  of  a  Christian  life, 
for  which  all  mankind,  and  not  the  Jews  only,  are  called. 
And  we  hear  from  Galatians  (ii.  9)  how,  twenty  years 
afterward,  Jesus'  own  brother,  James,  and  Peter  and 
John,  most  stubbornly  oppose  this  doctrine  of  Paul,  and, 
after  a  long  dispute,  reserve  for  themselves  the  preach- 
ing of  the  Gospel  to  the  Jews,  and  insist  on  circumcision. 
Even  the  Acts  (xv.  1)  tell  us  that  there  were,  in  the  orig- 
inal church  of  Jerusalem,  those  who  maintained  that, 
"  Except  ye  be  circumcised  after  the  manner  of  Moses  ye 
cannot  be  saved  " ;  and  (ibid.  xv.  6  ff.)  we  hear  that,  as 
late  as  that,  the  apostles  and  elders  had  to  come  together 
to  consider  this  matter  which  caused  so  much  dispute. 

According  to  Matthew  ix.  9  and  Mark  ii.  14,  Jesus 
sits  in  the  midst  of  publicans  and  sinners,  eating  and 
drinking;  the  reproach  of  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  he 
answers  with,  "  They  that  are  whole  have  no  need  of 
the  physician,  but  they  that  are  sick.  I  came  not  to 
call  the  righteous,  but  sinners  to  repentance."  In  Luke, 


SYNOPTIC    GOSPELS.  59 

this  occurrence  is  repeated  several  times  (Luke  xix.) 
Jesus  chooses  the  house  of  Zaccheus,  a  publican,  for  his 
abode,  and  again  answers  the  grumblers  (xix.  9),  u  This 
day  is  salvation  come  to  this  house,  forasmuch  as  he  also 
is  a  son  of  Abraham.  For  the  Son  of  Man  is  come  to 
seek  and  to  save  that  which  is  lost."  Again  (Luke  xv.  2), 
Jesus  is  in  the  midst  of  publicans  and  sinners,  and  again 
the  Pharisees  and  Scribes  murmur,  "  This  man  receiveth 
sinners,  and  eateth  with  them."  Jesus  retorts  by  the 
parables  of  the  lost  sheep,  the  lost  piece  of  silver,  and 
the  lost  son,  declaring  that  "  there  will  be  more  joy  in 
heaven  over  one  sinner  that  repenteth  than  over  ninety 
and  nine  just  persons,  which  need  no  repentance."  The 
same  idea  is  set  forth  in  endless  variation,  the  sick  and 
lame  and  maimed  are  called  to  the  bridal  dinner,  because 
the  friends  and  neighbors  refused  to  come ;  the  former  aro 
selected  and  the  latter  rejected,  etc.  Luke  dwells  upon  it 
with  special  delight ;  but  how  does  this  accord  with  the  fact 
that  James,  Jesus'  own  brother,  considered  it  as  some- 
thing abominable  to  eat  with  the  Gentiles  (Gal.  ii.  12); 
and  Peter,  who  for  a  little  while  forgot  himself,  has  to 
do  penance  for  doing  the  very  same  thing  for  which 
Jesus  had  set  the  example  ?  Even  according  to  Acts  x., 
Peter  had  to  receive  a  special  revelation  before  he 
would  enter  the  house  of  a  Gentile  and  eat  with  him, 
and,  later  (Acts  xi.),  had  to  defend  himself  against  the 
accusations  of  his  fellow-church-members  in  Jerusalem. 
How  strange,  if  Jesus  himself  had  really  acted  as  de- 
scribed in  the  Gospels ! 

According  to  all  three  Gospels  (Matt.  xxiv.  2 ;  Mark 
xiii.  2;  Luke  xix.  43,  44),  Jesus  prophesies  most  pos- 
itively the  destruction  of  the  temple  and  Jerusalem,  and 
the  rejection  of  the  Jews  as  a  nation  for  their  unbelief. 


60  SYNOPTIC    GOSPELS. 

And  about  forty  years  later,  the  author  of  the  Revela- 
tion, who  was  believed  to  be  John,  the  disciple  most 
beloved  of  Jesus,  but  who  surely  must  have  been  of  high 
authority,  or  he  could  not  have  spoken  to  the  seven 
churches  of  Asia  in  such  an  authoritative  tone — this 
author  of  the  Revelation  (vii.  3  ff.)  sees  all  the  tribes  of 
Israel  sealed  unto  the  living  God  as  the  true  believers, 
and  after  them,  tolerated  only,  the  great  multitude  of 
nations  "  which  no  man  numbers."  And  (Rev.  xi.  2) 
Jerusalem  is  and  remains  the  holy  city,  which  the 
Gentiles  may  tread  under  foot  for  forty  and  two  months, 
but  which  shall  never  fall. 

How  is  this  possible  ?  How  are  such  palpable  and 
glaring  contradictions  to  be  explained  ?  Science  fur- 
nishes the  explanation:  Jesus  can  never  have  spoken 
nor  acted  as  the  Gospels  represent  him  to  have  spoken 
and  acted.  Even  if  Luke  (i.  2)  would  not  have  told  us 
that  none  of  those  who  were  eye-witnesses  left  anything 
written  of  the  life  of  Jesus ;  even  if  all  the  Gospels  would 
not  tell  us  that  they  are  not  the  Gospels  of,  but  the  Gos- 
pels according  to  Matthew  and  Mark  and  Luke  and  John, 
we  would  have  to  infer  it  from  other  evidence.  The  early 
Christians  were  not  so  much  concerned  about  the  Christ 
who  had  lived  and  died,  as  about  the  Christ  who  was 
soon  to  reappear.  Paul,  and,  long  after  him,  the  Church, 
taught  the  people  to  look  out  and  watch  for  the  second 
coming  of  Christ,  for  the  world  which  was  soon  to  come. 
Now,  people  who  daily  expect  to  see  the  destruction  of 
this  world,  will  surely  not  take  the  trouble  of  writing 
history,  or  leaving  faithful  records  of  what  has  happened 
in  this  miserable  world  to  generations  which  are  to  have 
no  existence.  But  supposing  the  immediate  followers 
and  companions  of  Jesus  had  been  inclined  to  write  his 


SYNOPTIC   GOSPELS.  61 

history,  they  would  not  have  been  able  to  do  it,  for  they 
all  belonged  to  the  lowest,  the  illiterate  class  of  society ; 
they  were  those  of  whom  the  Gospels  so  often  speak : 
"  blessed  are  the  poor  in  mind,  those  babes  to  whom  it 
was  revealed  what  is  hidden  from  the  wise." 

This  is  further  corroborated  by  other  data :  Until  120 
A.C.  we  do  not  hear  of  any  Gospel.  The  first  isPapias, 
a  disciple  of  John,  who  speaks  of  a  collection  containing 
the  sayings  of  Christ  which  the  Apostle  Matthew  com- 
piled in  the  Hebrew  language  ;  but  our  Greek  Gospel 
according  to  Matthew  cannot  be  a  translation  of  these  say- 
ings. The  same  Papias  knows  of  evangelical  memorabilia 
which  Mark  is  said  to-  have  taken  down  from  the  dis- 
courses of  Peter,  but  the  description  he  gives  of  them 
plainly  shows  that  they  cannot  be  the  Gospel  according 
to  Mark. 

There  remains  not  the  slightest  shadow  of  doubt  that 
none  of  the  Gospels  were  composed  before  the  first  quar- 
ter of  the  second  century  after  Jesus.  According  to  all 
the  evidence  now  in  the  hands  of  critical  science,  the 
Gospel  according  to  Mark  must  have  been  the  first  of 
those  in  the  New  Testament,  for  Luke  (i.  1)  knew  of 
many  gospels  that  were  current  before  he  undertook  to 
write  his.  That  there  should  have  been  various  rela- 
tions of  the  same  events  is  very  natural,  as  the  lapse  of 
time  gave  occasion  for  modeling  these  events  according 
to  the  doctrines  and  opinions  of  those  who  related  them. 
This  is  confirmed  by  a  closer  examination  of  the  Gospels, 
which  shows  clearly  that  all  their  deviations  and  contra- 
dictions are  but  the  consequence  of  the  various  doctrines 
and  views  held  by  the  various  parties  we  know  already 
so  well ;  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  author  of  the  Gos- 
pel according  to  Matthew  was  a  Jew-Christian,  the 


62  THE    GOSPELS    OF    MATTHEW    AND    MARK. 

author  of  the  Gospel  according  to  Mark  a  somewhat 
timid,  and  the  author  of  the  Gospel  according  to  Luke  a 
very  decided  Pauline. 

We  said  that  all  indications  point  to  the  Gospel  of  Mark 
as  the  first  of  those  in  the  New  Testament,  and  that  its 
author  was  a  somewhat  timid  Pauline.  Now,  the  first  im- 
pulse to  write  a  life  of  Jesus  must  have  been  given  by 
the  Paulines.  The  Jew-Christians  had  the  authority  of 
Jesus  for  their  doctrine;  the  tradition  "thus,  and  thus 
did  Jesus  speak  and  act"  was  in  their  possession. 
This,  however,  did  not  hinder  the  Paulines  from  differ- 
ing with  them.  But  if  their  different  opinion  was  to  be 
the  only  true  one,  it  must  be  that  of  Jesus.  How  was 
this  to  be  accomplished  ?  Very  easily.  They  had  only 
to  do  what  other  generations  and  later  centuries,  to  this 
very  day,  were  and  are  doing.  Every  sect,  party,  or 
shading  of  Christianity  ascribes  the  doctrines  peculiarly 
its  own  directly  to  Jesus,  whose  life  and  teaching  it 
shapes  to  correspond  to  its  preconceived  ideal.  Just 
the  same  thing  did  the  Paulines  in  their  day ;  and  they 
could  not  do  it  more  effectively  than  by  writing  a  life  of 
Jesus.  These  endeavors  of  the  Paulines  to  represent 
the  life  of  Jesus  in  their  light  naturally  incited  the 
Jew-Christians  to  do  likewise,  and  thus  we  have  the  two 
Gospels,  that  according  to  Mark  and  that  according  to 
Matthew,  which  must  have  closely  followed  each  other. 
A  comparison  of  these  two  Gospels  shows  conclusively 
their  different  tendencies. 

Matthew  claims  a  decided  pre-eminence  for  Peter,  for 
instance  (xvi.  18)  :  "  And  I  say  also  unto  thee,  that  thou 
art  Peter  and  upon  this  rock  I  will  build  my  church : 
and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  it,"  which 
is  entirely  omitted  in  Mark  (viii.  29).  Matthew  (xv.  1- 


THE    GOSPELS    OF    MATTHEW    AND    MARK.  63 

20)  and  Mark  (vii.  1-23)  relate  one  and  the  same  story. 
The  disciples  of  Jesns  were  lax  in  some  insignificant 
observances;  they  ate  with  unwashed  hands,  for  which 
they  were  rebuked  by  the  Pharisees.  Jesus  justly 
replies :  u  not  that  which  goeth  into  the  mouth  defileth  a 
man,  but  that  which  cometh  out  of  the  mouth,  this 
defileth  a  man."  The  same  story  is  told  by  Mark,  but 
quite  a  different  meaning  is  put  upon  it.  In  Matthew 
the  meat  seems  denied  to  the  Pharisees,  because  eaten 
with  unwashed  hands,  as  he  expressly  explains  it  (xv. 
20) :  "  These  are  the  things  which  defile  a  man  ;  but  to 
eat  with  unwashed  hands  defileth  not  a  man."  In  Mark 
this  is  carefully  avoided,  and  in  its  place  dexterously 
laid  into  the  mouth  of  Jesus  (Mark  vii.  15), "  there  is 
nothing  from  without  a  man  that  entering  into  him  can 
defile  him,"  which  agrees  perfectly  with  Paul's  permission 
to  his  converts  "  to  eat  whatever  is  set  before  them,  and 
buy  unhesitatingly  whatever  is  sold  in  the  shambles" 
"  (1  Cor.  x.  25  ff').  Jesus,  in  speaking  of  the  destruction 
of  the  temple,  and  the  hardships  that  will  follow,  says, 
according  to  Matthew  (xxiv.  20) :  "  But  pray  ye  that  your 
flight  be  not  in  the  winter,  neither  on  the  Sabbath-day" ; 
but  Mark  (xiii.  18)  has  only  "  pray  ye  that  your  flight 
be  not  in  the  winter,"  ignoring  the  Sabbath-day  accord- 
ing to  Paul's  doctrine.  Again,  in  the  same  speech 
ascribed  to  Jesus  by  both  Matthew  and  Mark,  we  do 
not  find  in  Matthew  what  is  so  very  important  to  the 
Pauline  Mark  (xiii.  10),  ",lnd  the  Gospel  must  first  be 
published  among  all  nations." 

These  discrepancies  could  be  sliowu  in  a  hundred 
instances ;  but  those  we  have  cited  will  suffice  to  show 
that  Matthew  represents  a  decided,  though  already 
somewhat  modified,  Jew-Christianity,  while  Mark  is 


64  THE    GOSPEL    ACCORDING    TO    LUKE. 

modestly  speaking  for  Paulinism.  In  the  course  of 
time  even  this  modified  Jew-Christianity,  as  represented 
in  Matthew,  ceased  to  prevail;  Paulinism  gained  more  and 
•more  ground ;  and,  to  make  it  a  victory  sure  and  irrevo- 
cable, a  compromise,  as  favorable  as  possible  to  its  doc- 
trines, was  deemed  necessary.  The  same  prudent  mind 
which  accomplished  this  task  in  the  Acts,  is  to  be  per- 
ceived in  the  Gospel  according  to  Luke;  for  the  author 
of  the  Acts  is  also  the  author  of  the  third  Gospel,  as 
he  himself  declares  in  the  introduction  to  the  Acts. 
With  the  same  skillful  hand  with  which  in  the  Acts  he 
adroitly  wipes  away  all  unpleasantness  and  bitterness 
between  Paul  and  the  original  apostles,  by  transforming 
the  history  of  the  first  generations  after  Christ,  he 
undertakes  so  to  shape  the  life  and  acts  of  Jesus  that 
they  very  strikingly  represent  the  Pauline  doctrines 
without  giving  offence  to  the  Jew^-Christians.  Retain- 
ing all  the  main  features  of  the  narratives  of  Matthew 
and  Mark,  he  deftly  takes  away  every  stumbling-block, 
and  complacently  smooths  over  every  rough  and  un- 
even passage.  Whatever  is  unfavorable  to  Paulinism 
is  omitted  or  toned  down  ;  whatever  is  -favorable  is 
emphasized,  repeated  with  untiring  variations,  and 
greatly  enlarged  upon. 

For  instance :  Jesus'  command  (Matt.  x.  5),  "  go  not 
into  the  way  of  the  Gentiles,  and  into  any  city  of  the 
Samaritans  enter  ye  not,"  is  omitted  ;  the  harsh  treatment 
of  the  Samaritan  woman  (Matt.  xv.  24  ff.),  softened  down 
in  Mark  (vii.  25  ff.),  is  entirely  left  out  in  Luke.  What 
Jesus  says  of  t1  e  law  (Matt.  v.  18),  "  for  verily  I 
say  unto  you  till  heaven  and  earth  pass,  one  jot  or 
one  tittle  shall  in  no  wise  pass  from  the  law,  till  all 
be  fulfilled,"  is.  rendered  by  Luke  (xvi.  16,  IT),  "  The 


THE   GOSPEL   ACCORDING   TO   LUKE.  65 

law  and  the  prophets  were  until  John  :  since  that  time 
the  kingdom  of  God  is  preached  and  every  man  passes 
into  it.  And  it  is  easier  for  heaven  and  earth  to  pass 
than  one  tittle  of  the  law  to  fail."  (Matt,  xxiii.  1-3) : 
"  Then  spake  Jesus  to  the  multitude  and  to  his  disciples, 
saying,  The  Scribes  and  the  Pharisees  sit  in  Moses'  seat; 
all  therefore  whatsoever  they  bid  you  observe  that 
observe  and  do,  but  do  not  after  their  works,  for  they 
say  and  do  not,"  is  rendered  in  Luke  (xx.  45  ff.),  "  Then 
in  the  audience  of  all  the  people  he  said  unto  his  dis- 
ciples, Beware  of  the  Scribes  which  desire  to  walk  in 
long  robes,  and  love  greetings  in  the  markets  and  the 
highest  seats  in  the  synagogues  and  the  chief  rooms  at 
feasts,"  etc.  The  parable  of  the  rich  and  the  poor  man 
(Luke  xvi.  19),  originally  the  property  of  the  Ebionites, 
and  intended  to  teach  the  blessedness  of  poverty  by  the 
example  of  Lazarus,  has  lost  its  meaning  and  is  turned 
against  the  Jews,  who  are  condemned  by  their  own 
patriarch,  Abraham. 

In  the  two  other  Gospels  we  read  that  Jesus  took  the 
usual  route  from  Galilee  to  Jerusalem,  on  the  other  side 
of  Jordan,  through  Perea,  to  avoid  Samaria ;  but  Luke 
uot  only  makes  him  go  through  this  heathen  country,  so 
hated  by  the  Jews;  he  especially  selects  it  as  the  arena 
of  Jesus'  activity,  which  rivals  that  in  Galilee  (Luke  ix. 
51  ;  xviii.  35).  The  speeches  and  parables  of  Jesus, 
while  in  the  country  of  the  Samaritans,  are  marvelously 
adapted  to  justify  Paul's  doctrine.  There,  too,  that  no 
prerogative  be  left  to  the  twelve  Jew  apostles  (Luke  x.), 
seventy  others  are  appointed  who  are  sent  to  the  Gen- 
tiles (seventy,  for  there  were  then  believed  to  be  so  many 
nations) ;  they  are  obviously  preferred,  and  (x.  17)  return 
with  the  most  favorable  reports  of  their  message.  When, 


66  THE    GOSPEL    ACCORDING    TO    LUKE. 

in  the  Revelation  (xxi.  14),  no  room  is  left  for  the  name 
of  Paul,  among  the  other  apostles,  to  be  engraved  on  the 
foundation  of  the  new  Jerusalem,  the  names  of  these 
seventy  are  written  iu  heaven  (Luke  x.  20).  Every  sen- 
tence of  Matthew  directed  against  Paul,  for  instance 
(Matt.  xiii.  25),  where  the  enemy  comes  and  sows  tares 
among  the  wheat,  is  omitted  ;  other  sententious  passages 
are  dexterously  changed ;  for  instance,  in  Matthew  (vii. 
21  ff.),  Jesus  is  made  to  say,  "  Not  every  one  that  says 
unto  me  Lord,  Lord,  shall  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  but  those  who  perform  (by  work ;  the  Greek  poion 
leaves  no  ambiguity)  the  will  of  my  father  which  is  in 
heaven.  Many  will  say  to  me  on  that  day,  Lord,  Lord, 
have  we  not  prophesied  in  thy  name,  and  in  thy 
name  done  many  wonderful  works?  And  then  will 
I  profess  unto  them,  I  never  knew  you;  depart  from 
me,  ye  that  work  iniquity."  Here  the  workers  of 
iniquity  are  evidently  the  Paulines,  who  oppose  the  per- 
formance of  the  divine  will  by  work,  and  lay  all  the 
stress  upon  prophesying  and  doing  wonderful  works. 
In  Luke  (xiii.  25  if.)  it  is  somewhat  different :  "  And  ye 
begin  to  stand  without  and  to  knock  at  the  door,  saying, 
Lord,  Lord,  open  to  us,  and  he  shall  answer  and  say 
unto  you,  1  know  you  not  whence  you  are.  Then  shall 
ye  begin  to  say,  We  have  eaten  and  drunk  in  thy  pres- 
ence, and  thou  hast  taught  in  our  streets.  But  he  shall 
say,  I  know  you  not  whence  you  are,  depart  from  me  all 
ye  workers  of  iniquity."  Here  all  the  workers  of  iniq- 
uity are  those  who  were  continually  urging  against 
Paul  that  they  knew  the  Lord  according  to  the  flesh? 
that  is  the  Jew-Christians. 

It  would  lead  us  too  far  to  show  all  those  little,  but  so 
very  characteristic  and  significant,  traits  that  distinguish 


THE    GOSPEL    ACCORDING   TO    LUKE.  67 

each  of  the  three  Gospels,  and  by  which  the  authors  so 
skillfully  understand  how  to  serve  their  party  principles, 
while  apparently  they  are  telling  us  one  and  the  same 
story.  With  the  knowledge  of  their  tendencies,  it  will 
now  be  easy  to  ascertain  how  much  of  historical  truth 
there  is  left  to  construe  therefrom  the  historical  Jesus  of 
Nazareth. 


III. 

JESUS   OF  NAZAKETH. 

A  SCIENTIFIC  examination  of  the  Gospels  has  shown 
that  they  were  written  long  after  Jesus,  when  there  were 
no  longer  any  eye-witnesses,  and  that  the  motive  for 
their  composition  was  not  to  give  a  faithful  record  of  the 
life  of  Jesus,  but  to  justify  the  doctrines  and  positions  of 
the  parties  to  which  their  respective  authors  1  elonged. 
With  this  double  bias  the  sayings  and  traditions  which 
(Luke  i.  2)  "  they  had  delivered  unto  them  who  from  the 
beginning  were  eye-witnesses  and  ministers  of  the 
word  "  were  collected.  Early  Christianity  was  too  much 
Wrapped  in  the  anxious  anticipation  of  the  destruction 
of  this  world  and  the  second  coming  of  Christ  to 
have  any  thought  left  for  the  Christ  that  had  already 
been  in  this  world.  When,  therefore,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  second  century  A.C.,  the  various  parties,  in  order 
to  defend  their  own  position,  found  it  necessary  to  go 
back  to  the  life  of  Jesus,  very  little  was  actually  known 
of  it. 

How  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  The  first  thirty  years  of 
his  life  were  passed  in  secluded  obscurity.  Jesus  grew 
up  in  the  simple,  quiet  home  of  Joseph  the  carpenter 
and-  Mary  his  mother ;  and,  as  the  oldest  son  of  a 
numerous  family  (Matt.  xii.  46  ;  xiii.  55,  56  ;  Mark  iii. 
31  ;  Luke  viii.  xix.),  he  soon  took  up  the  trade  of  his 


JESUS    OF    NAZARETH.  69 

father.  When  he  began  his  short  but  eventful  career, 
his  towns-people  were  not  a  little  astonished,  and  ex- 
claimed (Mark  vi.  3)  :  "  Is  not  this  the  carpenter,  the 
son  of  Mary,  the  brother  of  James  and  Joses  and  Juda 
and  Simon,  and  are  not  his  sisters  here  with  us,  and  they 
are  offended  at  him."  This  public  career  at  which  his 
own  house  and  family  took  offence,  lasted  only  one, 
according*  to  others  three,  years.  How  much  of  it  could 
there  be  known  after  a  hundred  years,  when  Josephus, 
the  historian  of  those  days,  who  never  omits  anything 
wonderful  or  remarkable  which  may  possibly  redound  to 
the  glory  of  his  people,  and  who  speaks  of  many  other 
greatly  inferior  prophets  living  about  the  same  time 
(Jos.  Antiq.,  Book  xviii.,  chap,  v.,  sec.  2  ;  Book  xx.,  chap, 
v.,  sec.  1)  lias  not  a  word  to  say  concerning  him  ;  for  it  is 
well  known  that  the  passage  in  Josephus  (Book  xviii., 
chap,  iii.,  sec.  3),  where  allusion  is  made  to  him,  is  a  very 
palpable  and  disingenuous  interpolation. 

Nevertheless  there  was  one  infallible  guide  for  the 
composition  of  the  Gospels.  Jesus  was  the  Messiah. 
If  so,  then  all  that  the  prophets  had  said  of  the  Messiah, 
and  all  which  at  that  time  was  interpreted  into  the  Scrip- 
tures about  the  Messiah,  had  to  be  fulfilled  in  Jesus. 
Prototypes  of  such  a  life  were  given  in  the  lives  of 
Moses  and  Elijah,  which  could  easily  be  copied  and 
enlarged  upon.  To  give  one  instance:  There  was  noth- 
ing known  of  the  birth  and  early  life  of  Jesus.  Mark,  the 
oldest  and  most  trustworthy  of  the  Gospels,  omits  them 
entirely,  and  hastens  to  the  one  or  three  years  of  Jesus' 
public  activity ;  but  Matthew  and  Luke  give  us  very 
detailed  particulars  of  them.  Where  did  they  get  them  ? 
Well,  according  to  Micah  (v.  2),  "  But  thou  Bethlehem 
Ephratah,  thougli  thou  be  little  among  the  thousands 


70  JESUS    OF    NAZARETH. 

of  Judah,  yet  out  of  thee  shall  he  come  forth  unto  me 
that  is  to  be  ruler  in  Israel,"  the  Messiah  was  to  be  born 
in  Bethlehem.  It  is  true  the  prophet  only  speaks  of  a 
king  after  the  manner  of  David,  who  will  rise  out  oi 
David's  house ;  but  the  common  explanation  of  this 
verse  among  the  Jews  of  that  time  was  that  it  meant  the 
Messiah ;  the  Messiah,  therefore,  was  to  be  born  in  Beth- 
lehem. But  Jesus  was  too  well  knowrn  as  a  Galilean  and 
not  a  Judean ;  he  was  of  Nazareth.  How  can  this  be 
explained  ? 

There  are  two  modes  of  explanation  possible.  The 
one  is,  that  Joseph  and  Mary  originally  lived  in  Bethle- 
hem. And  what  induced  them  to  move  to  Nazareth  ? 
Nothing  but  the  danger  which  threatened  the  life  of  the 
new-born  Messiah  from  the  wicked  King  Herod,  just  as 
the  life  of  the  new-born  Moses,  the  first  savior  of  Israel, 
was  endangered  by  the  cruel  commands  of  the  wicked 
King  Pharaoh.  And  how  did  Herod  know  that  the 
savior  of  Israel  was  born  ?  Why,  the  same  men  who, 
according  to  the  Midrash,  (Jalkut,  sec.  165) — the  common 
popular  explanation  of  the  Scriptures — advised  Pha- 
raoh of  the  birth  of  Moses,  also  announced  the  birth  of 
Jesus  to  Herod,  viz. :  the  magicians.  And  how  did  the 
magicians  know  ?  In  the  case  of  Moses  they  read  it  in 
the  stars ;  they  could  surely  do  the  same  in  this  case  as 
well,  which  would  also  coincide  remarkably  with  an 
announcement  of  the  Scriptures  (Numbers  xxiv.  17), 
where  it  is  said  "  a  star  shall  rise  out  of  Jacob."  But  in 
Jerusalem  the  magicians  were  not  so  abundant  as  in 
Egypt ;  they  had  therefore  to  come  from  the  far  East, 
which  again,  very  fortunately,  gave  occasion  for  the  ful- 
fillment of  other  Scripture  verses  (Isaiah  Ix.  6 ;  Psalm 
Ixxii.  10),  where  it  is  said  that  foreign  princes  and  nations 


JESUS    OF    NAZARETH.  71 

will  bring  gifts  and  presents  to  the  savior  king  of  Israel, 
etc.  As  Moses  had  to  flee  from  the  wrath  of  the  wicked 
king,  so  has  this  second  Savior ;  but,  instead  of  from 
Egypt,  he  flees  to  Egypt,  which  at  that  time  was  the 
general  refuge  of  those  persecuted  in  Palestine.  When 
Joseph  and  Mary  afterward  learn  of  the  death  of  the 
wicked  king  they  return  to  Palestine,  but  are  too  much 
frightened  to  go  to  their  old  home  (Matt.  ii.  &2) ;  they 
seek  an  out-of-the-way  place  in  Galilee,  viz.  :  Nazareth, 
and  to  this  place  they  are  led  providentially,  that  another 
Scripture  verse  (Judges  xiii.  5)"  may  be  fulfilled,  which, 
though  it  is  said  of  Samson  and  has  quite  another  mean- 
ing, shall  account  for  Jesus  being  a  Nazarene.  And 
now  everything  is  nicely  arranged.  Thus  Matthew,  the 
Jew-Christian,  who  is  conversant  with  Jewish  traditions. 
Quite  different  it  is  with  Luke,  the  Pauline,  who  does 
not  wish  to  see  in  Jesus  merely  a  second  Moses.  Ac- 
cording to  him  Joseph  and  Mary  always  lived  in  Naza- 
reth (Luke  i.  26) ;  how  then  could  Jesus  be  born  in 
Bethlehem  ?  Well,  they  were  accidentally  there.  And 
what  caused  them  to  go  such  a  distance  ?  The  author  of 
the  Gospel  according  to  Luke  has  heard  something  of 
the  census  at  the  time  of  Augustus,  to  which  the  Jews  so 
reluctantly  submitted.  That  this  census  took  place  six 
or  ten  years  after  the  birth  of  Jesus  he  probably  did  not 
know ;  but  even  if  he  did  know,  such  an  insignificant 
anachronism  could  not  detain  him  from  using  the  census 
as  the  best  means  of  removing  the  whole  difficulty.  To 
bring  Joseph  and  Mary  at  the  nick  of  time  to  Bethle- 
hem, he  supposes,  likewise  against  historical  truth,  that, 
for  the  purpose  of  this  census,  every  Jew  had  to  go 
to  the  city  of  his  fathers.  The  imagination  of  the 
author,  once  started  in  this  direction,  very  soon  supplies 


72  JESUS    OF    NAZARETH. 

all  the  rest.  All  the  inns  are  occupied,  Joseph  and  Mary 
have  to  lodge  in  a  stable,  and  from  the  Acts  we  have 
seen  the  writer's  fondness  for  introducing  in  his  narra- 
tives hosts  of  angels  that  hold  sweet  intercourse  with  the 
favored  children  of  men,  and  we  are  not  in  the  least 
surprised  to  find  here  the  same  machinery  employed  to 
the  same  purpose  and  effect. 

These  two  narrations  of  Matthew  and  Luke  of  course 
contradict  and  preclude  each  other  on  all  points,  but 
those  who  have  a  critical  insight  into  the  various  ten- 
dencies of  the  Gospels  will  no  longer  call  it  contradic^ 
tion ;  they  will  see  how  the  same  legends,  when  told 
by  the  Jew-  Christian  Matthew,  necessarily  take  forms 
quite  different  from  those  which  the  Pauline  Luke  im- 
parts to  them.  The  one  derives  Jesus'  pedigree  from 
David,  the  Jewish  king;  the  other  from  Adam,  the 
father  of  all  men.  These  various  premises^  determine 
the  course  of  events  in  the  life  of  their  hero.  The  grad- 
ual formation  and  conglomeration  of  these  legends  can 
yet  be  traced  by  these  often  so  palpable,  still  oftener 
almost  imperceptible,  deviations  of  the  Gospels  from 
each  other.  We  see  that  each  is  trying  to  construe  the 
life  of  Jesus  according  to  the  doctrines  and  opinions  of 
his  party,  to  which  the  current  legends  and  sayings  have  to 
adapt  themselves.  From  their  various  standpoints  they  see 
fulfilled  in  him  whatever  of  the  Scriptures  they  deem  ne- 
cessary of  fulfillment  to  justify  their  faith  in  the  Messiah. 

But  at  last  the  main  question  will  naturally  arise : 
How  much  do  we  know  of  the  life  of  Jesus  ?  We  must 
confess  it  is  very,  very  little,  much  less  than  even  those 
scientists,  who  by  their  untiring  labor  and  researches 
have  contributed  most  to  these  discoveries,  are  willing 
to  admit.  It  is  about  this: 


JESUS    OF    NAZARETH.  73 

Jesus  was  born  and  reared  in  Nazareth,  a  small  city 
of  Galilee.     Galilee,  according  to  all  the  information  we 
have,  was  a  pleasant,  fruitful,  but  over-populated  prov- 
ince of  Palestine,  inhabited  by  Jews.     Not  so  secluded 
by  natural  boundaries  as  Judea,  the  surrounding  heathen 
countries  exerted  upon  the  customs  and  opinions  of  the 
Galileans  a  greater  influence  than  on  those  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  Judea.     The  system  of  education  then  prevail- 
ing among  the  Jews  made  it  almost  impossible  for  any 
man  to  be  without  some  knowledge  of  "  the  law"  (Baby- 
lonian Talmud,  Megila  24  a  ;  25  a) ;  and  the  weekly 
discourses  in  the  synagogues  on  the  Sabbath  made  even 
the  common  people  acquainted  with  the  wisdom  of  the 
great   teachers   in    Jerusalem.     The   higher  education, 
however,  could  only  be    acquired  in  Jerusalem,  from 
which  Galilee  was  cut  off  by  the  interlying  Samaria. 
The    Galileans,    therefore,   were    generally   considered 
ignorant ;  their  language  was  mixed  with  foreign  phrases, 
their  pronunciation  corrupt,  and  so  strongly  marked  that 
the  Galilean  was  thereby  at  once  recognized.     (Matt, 
xxvi.  73  ;  Mark  xiv.  79  -,  Babylonian  Talmud,  Erubin, 
53  #,   £>).     Their  ignorance,  as   is  generally  the  case, 
made  them  bigoted  ;    they  were    very  scrupulous  and 
strict  in  conforming  to  the  minutest  religious  observ- 
ances.    Superstition  is  not   inconsistent  with  bigotry ; 
and  the  common  superstition  of  those  days,  the  belief  in 
evil   spirits   that   possess   man,  grew  very   luxuriantly 
among  the  Galileans.     They  were  a  good-natured  but 
very  excitable  people,  easily  turned  into  fanatics,  which 
made    Galilee   the   hot-bed   of   politico-religious   insur- 
rections.    All  the  demagogues  and  agitators  of  the  peo- 
ple came  from  this  province  ;  we  know  of  Ezekias,  Judas 
his  son,  and  Teudas ;  there  the  Kanaim  or  Zealots  had 


74:  JE8US    OF    NAZARETH. 

their  origin,  and  there  they  found  most  of  their  adher- 
ents. 

This  was  the  general  character  of  the  Galileans,  but 
Jesus  lived  at  a  time  when  the  waves  of  political  and 
religious  excitement  rose  very  high.  The  Edomite  fam- 
ily of  the  Herodians  had  only  offended  the  national 
pride ;  but  the  all-powerful  Romans  were  trying  to  sub- 
vert their  whole  commonwealth,  their  political  and  reli- 
gious institutions.  The  hope  to  resist  successfully  the 
enemy  grew  weaker  and  weaker,  and  the  longing  for  a 
deliverer  more  intense  It  was  generally  believed  that 
this  deliverer  would  soon  appear  if  the  people  were 
worthy  of  him;  and  there  were  not  men  wanting  to 
exhort  the  people  to  greater  piety  and  purity,  that  the 
promised  deliverer  might  thereby  be  conjured  down. 

One  of  these  men  was  John  the  Baptist,  who  lived 
by  the  side  of  the  Jordan.  He  called  upon  the  people  to- 
repent,  and,  to  impress  them  more  deeply,  he  used  im- 
mersion in  the  waters  of  the  Jordan  as  a  symbol  of  puri- 
fication quite  usual  among  the  Jews.  Many  people 
flocked  to  this  John,  and  "  were  greatly  moved  by  hear- 
ing his  words"  (Josephus,  Antiq.,  Book  xviii.,  chap,  v., 
sec.  2).  Among  these  was  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  "  The  king- 
dom of  heaven  is  at  hand,"  was  the  prophetic  announce- 
ment of  John,  which  must  have  made  a  deep  impression 
upon  Jesus'  sensitive  mind,  saturated  as  it  was  with  the 
wild  hopes  of  his  Galilean  surroundings.  That  the  deliv- 
erer of  the  people  must  soon  come  was  the  firm  convic- 
tion of  many,  but  where  he  was  or  who  he  was  nobody 
could  or  dared  to  tell. 

John,  like  the  old  prophets,  had  no  respect  for  per- 
sons. Herod  Antipas,  tetrarch  of  Galilee,  had  married 
Herodias,  his  brother's  wife,  who  had  unceremoniously 


JESUS   OF   NAZARETH.  75 

divorced  herself  from  her  former  husband.  Such  a  fla- 
grant violation  of  the  law  could  not  remain  unnoticed  by 
John.  He  openly  rebuked  Herod,  and  the  tyrant,  fear- 
ing John's  influence  upon  the  people,  had  him  impris- 
oned in  the  fortress  Macbaerus,  where  he  was  soon  be- 
headed, upon  the  instigation  of  Herodias. 

The  imprisonment  and  subsequent  death  of  John 
were  the  signal  for  Jesus  to  step  into  the  vacant  place, 
to  become,  like  him,  a  prophet,  and  to  stir  up  the  people 
to  repentance,  for  "  the  kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand." 
In  his  own  city  (Nazareth)  he  found  more  opposers 
than  followers.  He  turned  to  Capernaum,  a  small  city 
on  the  northwestern  shore  of  the  sea  of  Genezareth. 
There,  among  the  simple  fishermen  and  the  lower  classes 
of  the  people,  he  found  many  followers  and  adherents. 
The  house  of  Peter,  one  of  his  disciples,  became  his 
home  and  the  center  of  a  large  circle  of  ardent  admirers. 
A  new  prophet  had  arisen  in  Israel,  and  as  such  he  had 
to  perform  wonders  and  cures,  and  especially  to  drive 
out  the  evil  spirits  which  haunted  the  imagination  of  this 
simple  populace.  Those  who  believed  were  easily  cured; 
those  who  were  not  cured,  at  least,for  the  moment,  pro- 
fessed to  have  their  troubles  alleviated  or  cured,  lest  they 
should  be  counted  sinners  past  redemption.  "  I  believe, 
O  Lord  !  help  thou  my  unbelief,"  was  probably  the  lead- 
ing thought  of  many  who  approached  him  for  help. 
This  success,  and  the  extravagant  praise  of  his  compan- 
ions and  followers,  soon  awakened  in  Jesus  the  thought, 
"  How  if  thou  thyself  wert  the  promised  deliverer,  the 
Messiah  ?  "  Timidly  and  hesitatingly  he  yielded  to  this 
bold  and  proud  thought,  to  which  he  himself  did  not 
dare  to  give  utterance.  To  hear  from  others  what  in  our 
inmost  heart  we  wish  to  hear,  but  dare  not  express  with 


T6  JESUS   OF   NAZARETH. 

our  lips,  gives  us  more  assurance ;  and  thus  Jesus  con- 
tinually solicits  others  to  tell  him  what,  as  the  most 
secret  but  also  the  most  cherished  thought,  is  buried  in 
his  own  bosom ;  yet,  as  soon  as  it  is  uttered,  his  soul  is 
startled,  he  shrinks  back,  and  requests  its  concealment 
from  all  other  men. 

In  Galilee  he  had  already  many  followers  who  implic- 
itly believed  in  the  new  prophet-,  but  this  was  of  no  con- 
sequence so  long  as  Judea,  and  especially  Jerusalem, 
would  not  acknowledge  his  claims.  There,  he  felt,  the 
most  difficult  part  of  his  prophetic  career  was  yet  to  be 
performed.  The  higher  and  better  educated  classes  of 
Jerusalem  not  only  looked  with  disdain  upon  an  ignor- 
ant Galilean,  but  also  dreaded  every  commotion  of  the 
people,  and  therefore  explicitly  denied  the  popular  hopes 
of  a  Messiah  (See  note,  p.  21).  Still,  if  his  budding  fame 
was  not  soon  to  fade,  it  was  necessary  to  establish  it  in 
the  capital ;  and,  after  much  wavering,  he  resolved,  at 
the  approach  of  the  Passover  festival,  to  go  to  Jerusa- 
lem among  the  other  pilgrims.  The  Passover  ^festival 
was  the  most  opportune  time  for  such  an  agitation  ; 
during  this  festival  there  were  not  only  many  Gali- 
leans— his  friends  and  adherents — in  Jerusalem,  but 
also  a  great  many  of  the  country  people,  whose  kin- 
dred spirits  could  more  easily  be  moved  and  con- 
vinced than  the  cold  and  reflecting  minds  of  the  citi- 
zens. Surrounded  by  his  friends  and  adherents,  he 
entered  Jerusalem,  and,  going  up  to  the  temple-moun- 
tain, he  at  once  created  a  disturbance  by  overturning 
the  tables  of  the  money-changers  and  the  seats  of  those 
that  sold  doves  in  the  temple  courts  (Mark  xi.  15).  Such 
an  act  was  no  unusual  piece  of  presumption  for  a  prophet. 
But  prophets  and  agitators,  in  those  later  days  of  the 


RESITS   Otf   KA2ARETH.  77 

Roman  oppression,  had  become  rather  dangerous  to  the 
commonwealth,  as  they  always  gave  the  Romans  a  pre- 
text for  interference,  new  cruelties,  and  new  slaughters. 
On  the  Passover  festival  the  Romans  usually  took 
special  precautions.  The  Roman  procurator,  who  re- 
sided in  Csesarea,  came  to  Jerusalem  ;  the  garrison  was 
increased  and  kept  under  arms,  so  that,  at  a  moment's 
notice,  the  rude  soldiery  could,  fall  upon  the  people,  if 
any  tumult  should  arise.  (Jos.,  Antiq.,  Book  xx.,  chap. 
v.,  sec.  3).  This  festival,  therefore,  was  greatly  dreaded 
by  the  Jewish  authorities  of  those  days,  on  account  of 
the  frequent  collisions  between  the  congregated  Jews 
and  the  Roman  army. 

Jesus,  it  is  true,  endeavored  to  avoid  the  political 
danger  by  declaring  a  new  world  and  a  new  state  of 
things  as  coming  which  was  to  have  nothing  in  common 
with  this  world.  But  if  this  world  was  to  perish,  the 
then-existing  temporal  powers  were  likewise  threatened. 
The  ruling  party,  i.e.,  the  Sadducees,  opposed  to  all 
innovations,  and  principally  to  the  belief  in  a  coming 
world,  were  the  more  eager  to  suppress  this  new  move- 
ment, as  the  head  of  their  party,  the  high  priest,  was 
generally  held  responsible  for  every  public  disturbance. 
The  natural  consequence  was  that  those  in  power,  to 
avoid  such  great  calamities  as  might  ensue  from  the 
declaration  "  a  new  world  is  coming,"  had  Jesus  impris- 
oned before  the  beginning  of  the  festival.  That  this 
imprisonment  took  place  on  Passover-eve  is  very  im- 
probable, as  it  is  against  the  Jewish  law  to  hold  court 
during  a  festival.,  or  to  commence  a  trial  in  the  night 
time.  The  fact  is,  that  before  the  beginning  of  the  Pass- 
over festival  Jesus  was  brought  before  the  high  priest, 
who  hastily  convened  an  informal  court,  which  declared 


THE   DOCTRINES   OF   JESUS. 

that  Jesus'  claim  to  be  the  expected  Messiah  was  noth- 
ing but  blasphemy,  for  which  he  should  suffer  the 
penalty  of  death.  This,  however,  could  only  be  inflicted 
by  the  Roman  procurator.  Pilate  was  then  in  office,  and, 
according  to  all  we  know  of  him,  he  was  the  last  person 
to  hesitate  for  a  moment  in  putting  to  death  a  man  who 
declared  himself  the  Messiah,  i.e.,  the  anointed  king 
of  the  Jews.  Thus  Jesus  found  an  untimely  death  on 
the  cross ;  it  was  the  death  of  the  enthusiast,  who  dies 
heroically  for  an  idea.  What  this  idea  was  is  to  be 
seen  from  the  doctrines  laid  down  by  Jesus. 

WHAT  ABE  THE  DOCTRINES  OF  JESUS  ? 

Jesus  of  Nazareth  who  assumed  the  role  of  the  Mes- 
siah, then  so  anxiously  expected  by  the  masses  of  the 
Palestinian  Jews  as  the  deliverer  from  all  their  oppres- 
sion and  the  founder  of  a  new  world — that  is  to  say,  of  a 
new  order  of  things,  in  which  those  now  oppressed  would 
be  the  rulers,  and  the  present  rulers  be  the  oppressed ;  in 
whicli  the  first  would  be  the  last  and  the  last  first — is  gen- 
erally believed  to  be  the  founder  of  Christianity  as  it  now 
is.  To  be  true  followers  of  Jesus,  to  adhere  to  his  doctrine 
and  believe  in  him,  as  he  believed  in  himself,  is  the  com- 
mon ground  on  which  all  the  multifarious  denominations 
of  Christendom  stand.  Even  those  who,  on  account  of 
the  light  which  modern  science  is  continually  spreading, 
feel  compelled  to  separate  from  all  these  denominations, 
cannot  tear  themselves  away  from  a  veneration  and 
belief  inculcated  in  the  minds  of  so  many  preceding  gen- 
erations. For  their  breaking  away  from  the  denomina- 
tional bounds,  they  generally  give  the  same  reason  for 
which  all  the  others  deem  it  necessary  to  remain  within 
them,  viz. :  to  be  true  followers  of  Jesus.  Now,  if  we  do 


THE   DOCTRINES   OF   JESUS.  <5> 

not  wish  to  wrong  Jesus  and  violate  historical  truth,  we 
must  abstract  from  this  idolizing  and  sublimating  process, 
and  simply  state,  the  facts  which  the  three  Synoptic 
Gospels,  under  their  legendary  and  mythical  garb,  have 
preserved. 

This   compels   us,  in   the   first   place,    to    exonerate 
Jesus  from  the  grave  imputation  of  having  declared  him- 
self God,  or  equal  to  God.     No  (Mark  xii.  29)  :   "  Hear, 
O  Israel,   the  Eternal  our  God,  the  Eternal   is   One," 
is   held   up   by   him   as  the  first  of  all  the  command- 
ments ;  what  he  claimed  was  the  Messiahship,  for  which 
he  thought  himself  specially  chosen   and   predestined. 
Even  in  making  this  claim,  we  can  distinctly  see  how  his 
heart  is  palpitating  and  his  conscience  disturbed,  for  it 
was  inconsistent  with  the  traditions  of  the  people,  accord- 
ing to  which  the  Messiah  was  to  come  out  of  the  house 
of  David,     These  noble  emotions,  however,  were  soon 
calmed  down  by   his   unexpected  success,  the  implicit 
faith  and   boundless   praise  of  his   followers,  until   he 
could  reason  them  away  in  the  manner  then  so  much  in 
vogue  by  taking  a  Scripture  verse  and  letting  it  say 
just  what  you  wanted  it  to  say.    We  read  (Matt.  xxii.  42 
ff. ;  Mark  xii.  35   if.  ;    Luke   xx.  41  if.) :  "  And   Jesus 
answered  arid  said,  while  he  taught  in  the  temple,  How 
say  the  Scribes  that  Christ  is  the  son  of  David  ?     For 
David  himself  said  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  The  Lord  said  unto 
my  Lord,  Sit  thou  on  my   right  hand,  till  I  make  thine 
enemies  thy  footstool.     David,  therefore,  himself  called 
him  Lord,  and  whence  is  he  then  his  son  ?     And  the 
common  people  heard  him  gladly."     The  psalm  is  evi- 
dently addressed  to  a  king  or  prince  to  whom  the  poet 
announces  victory,  and  sings :  "  The  Eternal  said  to  my 
Lord  [the  king]  Sit  on  my  right  hand,  etc." ;  but  in  the 


80  I-HE   DOCTRINES   Otf   JESTTS. 

manner  and  taste  of  those  days,  the  application  of  the 
psalm  to  the  Messiah  is  quite  conclusive  to  show  that  it 
is  not  absolutely  necessary  for  the  Messiah  to  be  a 
descendant  of  David,  and  the  application  is  ingenious 
enough  to  please  the  common  people  and  satisfy  Jesus 
that,  though  not  a  descendant  of  David,  he  may  never- 
theless be  the  promised  Messiah. 

The  Messiah,  according  to  the  Jewish  conception,  was 
to  be  a  man  specially  chosen  by  God  for  the  redemption 
of  his  people  and  the  rest  of  the  world  ;  Jesus,  therefore, 
did  not  claim  any  higher  than  human  nature ;  he  did 
not  claim  sinlessness,  or  he  would  not  have  gone  to  John 
to  be  baptized  and  cleansed  from  sin  ;  he  would  not  have 
prayed  so  fervently  "  forgive  us  our  trespasses ;  "  nay, 
he  could  not  have  prayed  at  all,  if  he  considered  him- 
self God  or  equal  to  God,  for  what  possible  benefit 
can  prayer  have  when  directed  to  oneself?  Jesus,  who 
declined  even  the  attribute  of  goodness,  could  not  fall 
into  such  an  error  (Matt.  xix.  17;  Mark  x.  18  if.;  Luke 
xviii.  19) :  "  Jesus  said,  Why  callest  thou  me  good  ?  there 
is  none  good  but  one,  that  is  God." 

As  a  Jew  he  could  not  do  otherwise,  and  Jesus  was 
nothing  but  a  Jew.  Even  if  the  authors  of  the  Revela- 
tion and  the  Acts  would  not  tell  us  that  the  most  faith- 
ful imitators  of  and  believers  in  Jesus  were  zealous 
Jews,  and  wished  to  be  nothing  but  Jews,  we  would 
learn  it  from  the  Gospels,  which  characterize  him  as  a 
perfect  type  of  the  Jews  of  those  days.  He  is  averse  to 
the  rigorous  application  of  the  rabbinical  laws — for 
instance,  the  Sabbath  laws,  purification  laws,  etc. — and  is 
in  favor  of  straining  the  moral  laws  to  their  utmost 
extent,  for  instance,  the  ten  commandments  (Matt.  v. 
21,  27,  31),  etc.  But  this  was  nothing  unusual  since  the 


THE    DOCTRINES    OF   JESUS,  81 

time  of  the  prophets,  and  in  his  days  was  especially 
advocated  by  the  reform  movement  of  Hillel.  Such 
difference  of  opinion  was  never  considered  heresy  among 
the  Jews ;  the  same  thing  happened  daily  in  the  schools 
of  Hillel  and  Shammai.  The  difference  of  opinion  very 
seldom  affected  the  practice,  and  thus  we  hear  Jesus 
continually  exhort  his  adherents  to  bring  the  sacrifices 
prescribed  by  the  law  of  Moses,  just  as  we  hear  from 
the  Acts  that  they  always  did  as  long  as  the  temple 
existed.  He  reiterates  his  intention  to  fulfill  and  not  to 
destroy  the  law;  of  the  laws  not  a  jot  nor  tittle  shall 
fail ;  his  disciples  are  commanded  to  observe  and  do 
whatever  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  who  are  sitting  in 
the  seat  of  Moses,  bid  them  observe.  He  was  a  Jew  in 
every  respect,  and  never  dreamed  of  establishing  a 
new  religion.  If  anybody  had  foretold  Jesus  that  his 
exertions  would  lead  to  a  new  religion,  by  which  his 
own  Judaism  would  in  time  be  persecuted  with  the  most 
bitter  hatred,  lie  would  have  denounced  such  a  man  as  a 
false  prophet  and  a  malignant  slanderer.  He,  who  most 
positively  declared  (Matt.  xvi.  28  ;  Mark  ix.  1 ;  Luke  ix. 
27) :  "  Yerily,  I  say  unto  you,  that  there  be  some  of  them 
that  stand  here  who  shall  not  taste  of  death  till  they 
have  seen  the  kingdom  of  God  come  with  power," 
could  not  think  of  establishing  a  new  religion  for  the 
short  time  this  world  was  yet  to  last.  On  the  contrary, 
he  was  so  strongly  imbued  with  the  Judaism  which  then 
prevailed  among  the  lower  and  more  ignorant  classes, 
that  his  whole  being  was  taken  up  with  it,  and  his 
course  of  life  ordained  by  it ;  he  was  so  much  a  child  of 
his  own  time,  a  son  of  his  own  people,  that  he  indeed 
might  serve  as  their  strongest  representative.  It  was  a 
time  in  which  the  national  and  religious  feelings  of  the 


82  THE    DOCTRINES    OF   .TEStJfl. 

Jews  in  Palestine  were  goaded  to  the  verge  of  despair. 
The  conviction  that  this  world  was  too  corrupt  to  last 
any  longer  was  held  by  many  ;•  this  world  deserves  to 
perish  arid  therefore  must  shortly  perish.  The  time  is 
fulfilled,  the  kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand  ;  all  that  is  left 
is  to  repent  and  prepare  for  the  world  which  is  soon  to 
come.  The  genius  of  the  people,  eminently  a  religious 
one,  was  sick  and  sore  at  heart  and  soul,  and  a  sickly 
religious  exuberance  was  the  natural  result. 

John  the  Baptist  was  indeed  the  forerunner  of  Jesus. 
His  self-imposed  task  of  calling  the  people  to  repentance 
and  preparing  them  for  the  coming  world  was  taken  up 
by  Jesus  where  John  had  left  it,  But  the  hopes  of 
the  people  became  daily  more  and  more  impatient ; 
Jesus,  carried  forward  on  the  waves  of  the  popular  cur- 
rent, had  to  complete  the  work  of  John  the  Baptist  by 
advocating  maxims  adapted  to  the  belief  in  a  world 
which  was  soon  to  come.  And  here  it  is  that  we  can 
speak  of  a  doctrine  peculiar  to  Jesus  only.  In  every 
other  respect — it  cannot  be  repeated  too  often — Jesus 
was  a  true  son  of  his  people,  a  child  of  his  time ;  the 
morals,  laws,  and  doctrines  he  taught  were  those  of  his 
time  and  people  ;  even  his  method  of  teaching  in  para- 
bles and  symbols  was  taken  from  the  popular  teachers  of 
those  days,  who  employed  this  method  whenever  they 
did  not  believe  there  was  a  higher  theological  train- 
ing among  their  auditors ;  he  used  proverbs,  sayings, 
and  stories  for  his  illustrations,  just  as  the  popular 
teachers  of  the  Midrash  did ;  but  whenever  he  gave 
advice  or  directions  for  the  life  here  on  earth,  he  followed 
his  own  theory,  which,  indeed,  deviated  decidedly  from  a 
sound  and  healthy  conception  of  Judaism. 

This  theory  we  know  already ;   it  is :  "  this  world  is 


THE   DOCTRINES   OF   JESUS. 


83 


soon  to  perish,"  and  his  doctrines  in  regard  to  the  life 
here  on  earth  are  but  the  natural  consequences  of  this 
theory.  If  this  world  is  soon  to  perish  then  it  is  not 
worth  while  to  take  any  care  for  to-morrow,  or  to  accu- 
mulate earthly  treasures  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  wise  to 
give  away  all  you  have  to  the  poor,  and  share  their 
blessedness  of  poverty.  *  It  is  not  worth  while  to  resist 
evil  in  this  world,  but  "  whosoever  shall  smite  thee  on 
thy  right  cheek,  turn  to  him  the  other  also  ;  if  anybody 
takes  away  thy  coat,  let  him  have  thy  cloak  also  ;  "  to 
maintain  justice  and  equity  in  this  world  is  impossible  ; 
and  as  another  is  soon  to  come,  why  labor  in  vain  to 
establish  it  ?  Suffer  meekly  and  submissively,  for  great 
is  your  reward  in  heaven,  f 

*  It  would  be  surprising  if  this  sentiment,  which  was  but  a 
natural  outgrowth  of  the  insecurity  of  all  property  and  the  pre- 
vailing lawless  violence  which  made  worldly  goods  often  a  very 
dangerous  incumbrance,  should  be  found  only  with  Jesus  and 
his  adherents.  And,  indeed,  the  Talmud  gives  us  sufficient  indi- 
cations that  it  existed  in  wider  circles.  In  Jerusalem  Talmud, 
Peah  15  b  we  read  that  Rabbi  Jeshobeb  gave  away  all  his  prop- 
erty to  the  poor.  He  lived  at  the  time  of  Jesus,  for  Rabbi  Gam- 
aliel disapproved  of  his  action  ;  and  (Babylonian  Talmud, 
Kethuboth  50  a  ;  Arachin  28  a  )  we  hear  that  a  convention  of 
rabbis,  held  in  Usha,  a  small  town  of  upper  Galilee,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  second  century  A.C.,  had  to  decree  that  he  who  wished 
to  give  his  property  to  the  poor,  must  not  be  allowed  to  give 
more  than  one-fifth  of  all  he  had  ;  no  such  decree  would  have  been 
necessary,  if  the  mania  to  divest  oneself  of  all  property  had  not 
been  prevailing. 

f  Jesus'  doctrine  of  non-resistance,  so  foreign  to  Judaism,  which 
teaches  :  "justice  must  prevail,  though  it  have  to  pierce  the  moun- 
tains, "  is  likewise  but  a  sad  testimony  of  the  hardships  of  his 
days,  when  resistance  to  injustice  was  useless  and  even  danger- 
ous ;  sympathetic  chords  we  hear  sometimes  sounded  in  the  Tal- 
mud ;  for  instance  (Yoma  22  &,  and  parallels)  :  "  rather  be  of  those 
who  are  humbled  than  of  those  who  humble  others  ;  be  of  those 
who  are  offended  and  answer  not  ;  of  those  who  perform  joy- 


84r  THE   DOCTRINES    OF   JESUS. 

There  is  no  time  for  fastening  and  cherishing  the  ties 
of  the  family,  of  society,  and  the  commonwealth  which 
are  all  to  perish;  the  sanctity  of  the  family  relations 
between  father  and  son,  mother  and  daughter,  brothers 
and  sisters  and  friends,  held  in  such  high  esteem  among 
the  Jews,  must  fall  away  and  be  disregarded  under  such 
pressing  circumstances.  There  is  not  a  word  in  favor 
of  all  these  family  bonds,  but  many  intimations  that 
they  are  a  hindrance  to  the  fulfillment  of  his  mission. 
Jesus  himself  is  separated  from  his  family,  does  not 
even  grant  a  hearing  to  his  mother  and  brothers,  when 
they  come  to  see  him  (Matt.  xii.  46 ;  Mark  iii.  31  ff. ;  Luke 
viii.  19),  because  his  disciples  and  followers  are  his  all 
in  all,  his  mother  and  brothers,  for  they  likewise  have 
left  fathers  and  mothers,  wives  and  children,  to  follow 
him  (Matt.  xix.  27 ;  Mark  x.  28  ;  Luke  xviii.  28).  He 
distinctly  announces  that  he  has  not  come  to  bring  peace 
but  war  into  the  family  circle :  "  the  son  shall  be  at 
variance  against  his  father,'  and  the  daughter  against  her 
mother,  and  the  daughter-in-law  against  her  mother-in- 
law.  And  a  man's  foes  shall  be  they  of  his  own  house- 
hold (Matt.  x.  34  ff.)  The  thoughts  of  man  shall  be 
entirely  diverted  from  this  world,  and  directed  toward 
the  world  to  come.  This  is  the  only  object  worth  living 
for.  Can  we  yet  be  astonished  to  find  such  a  confusion 
of  ideas,  wherever  he  condescends  to  give  directions  in 
regard  to  the  affairs  of  this  miserable  world  ? 

For  instance :  Hillel  had  given  the  so-called  golden 
rule  (Babylonian  Talmud,  Sabbath,  31  #),  "  whatsoever 
thou  wouldst  that  men  should  do  to  thee,  do  thou  even 
so  to  them,"  to  a  heathen,  who  wished  to  know  the  sum 

fully  the    will  of  their  Heavenly  Father,  and   rejoice   over  the 
afflictions  that  come  over  them." 


THE    DOCTRINES    OF    JESUS.  $5 

total  of  Judaism  in  as  short  a  time  as  he  could  stand 
on  one  foot.  But  this  law  of  mere  reciprocity,  easily 
comprehended  even  by  a  heathen,  remains  far  behind 
the  obligations  of  a  Jew,  which  Jesus  likewise  states 
(Mark  xii.  29  ft'.):  "  The  iirst  of  all  commandments  is, 
"  Hear,  O  Israel !  the  Eternal  our  God,  the  Eternal  is 
One.  And  thou  shalt  love  the  Lord,  thy  God,  with 
thy  whole  heart  and  with  thy  whole  soul  and  with  thy 
whole  might.  And  the  second  is  like  it,  namely : 
Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  This  love 
of  God  and  man,  as  the  disputing  Scribe  affirms,  is  the 
real  characteristic  of  Judaism,  and  not  the  so-called 
golden  rule.  For  this  very  important  distinction  Jesus 
has  no  understanding;  he  places  this  rule  of  recip- 
rocity not  only  on  the  same  level  with  the  love  of 
God  and  man,  but  makes  it  the  keystone  of  all  morality  ; 
while,  inconsistently  enough,  he  commands  m  another 
place,  what  is  impossible,  to  love  our  enemies,  with  which 
is  coupled  the  erroneous  statement  that  of  old  it  was 
commanded  to  hate  our  enemies,  which  commandment 
is  nowhere  to  be  found. 

Such  impracticable  doctrines,  much  more  foreign  to 
Judaism  than  his  claim  to  the  Messiahship,  carried  him 
to  the  extremest  limits  of  Judaism,  from  whence  but  a 
few  steps  were  necessary  to  be  outside  of  its  pale.  Be- 
sides, just  what  was  sublimest  in  Jesus  was  apt  to  give 
offence  to  the  true  Jewish  spirit :  we  mean  his  childlike 
trust  and  confidence  in  God.  Jesus  undoubtedly  was  a 
religious  genius,  his  whole  being  was  drawing  away 
from  the  real  toward  the  ideal ;  and  thus  the  childlike 
confidence  in  the  goodness  and  mercy  of  God,  as  taught 
by  Judaism,  could  easily  be  turned  in  his  mind  into  the 
childish  idea  that,  whatever  man  may  pray  for  from  his 


Sr6  THE    DOCTRINES    OF   JESUS. 

Heavenly  Father,  if  he  does  it  with  true  faith  and  implicit 
trust  and  does  it  persistently  it  will  be  granted,  just  as 
an  indulgent  father  will  grant  everything  to  his  beloved, 
crying  child,  though  it  be  irrational.  (Matt,  xxvii.  20 
if. ;  Mark  xi.  22  if. ;  Luke  xvii.  6  if.) :  "  And  Jesus  saith, 
Have  faith  in  God.  For  verily  I  say  unto  you,  that 
whosoever  shall  say  unto  this  mountain,  Be  thou  removed 
and  be  thou  cast  into  the  sea,  and  shall  not  doubt  in  his 
heart,  but  shall  believe  that  those  things  which  he  says 
shall  come  to  pass,  he  shall  have  whatever  he  saith,"  etc. 
Psychologically  we  may  trace  the  source  of  this  belief 
to  the  miraculous  cures  which  he,  as  well  as  his  adher- 
ents, believed  to  have  been  accomplished  at  his  bidding. 
At  the  beginning  of  his  career  these  miracles  were,  un- 
doubtedly, an  inexplicable  mystery  to  himself;  but  the 
growing  faith  in  his  Messiahship  suggested  the  explana- 
tion that  it  was  the  result  of  his  prayers  and  faith  in  God. 

Such  a  faith  naturally  stimulated  him  to  persevere  in 
his  adopted  role  to  the  bitter  end.  With  God  every- 
thing is  possible;  his  kingdom  may  come  any  time,  and 
then  the  Messiah  will  be  revealed  to  all  mankind. 
It  was  the  staff  and  support  on  which  he  leaned  securely, 
while  he  had  to  suffer  for  his  idea,  which  he  never  gave 
up  until,  perhaps,  in  the  last  moment,  in  the  agony  of 
death,  when  he  exclaimed,  in  the  Psalmist's  words: 
"  My  Gpd,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  ?  " 

After  this  tragic  death  his  frightened  disciples  and 
followers  scattered  and  fled  to  Galilee,  as  the  Gospels 
indicate.  It  is  too  late,  in  our  age,  to  offer  any  argu- 
ments against  the  presumed  resurrection.  The  death 
of  Jesus  is  testified  beyond  dispute  ;  of  his  resurrection, 
setting  aside  the  many  contradictions  in  the  three  rela- 
tions, we  have  only  the  testimony  of  Mary  Magdalen,  a 


THE   RESURRECTION    OF   JESUS.  87 

nervous,  amorous,  and  excitable  woman,  out  of  whom 
Jesus  had  driven  seven  devils ;  that  is  to  say,  a  woman 
afflicted  with  periods  of  insanity.  It  is  scarcely  neces- 
sary to  say  that  this  resurrection  took  place  only  in  the 
imagination  of  Jesus'  followers,  and  the  process  by 
which  this  was  accomplished  was  a  very  natural  one. 

We  all  know  our  state  of  mind  when  one  who  is 
near  and  dear  to  us  has  departed  to  the  mysterious 
realms  of  eternity ;  we  know  that  for  some  time  we 
cannot  comprehend  it.  Even  if  we  ourselves  have 
closed  his  eyes,  have  brought  the  dear  relics  to  their 
last  resting-place,  it  seems  that  we  must  meet  the  dear 
departed  one  whenever  we  enter  the  house;  we  hear 
his  voice,  the  fall  of  his  footsteps  in  the  hall,  on  the 
stairs  ;  we  cannot  believe  separation  forever  to  be  pos- 
sible. Thus  it  is  in  every  common  case  ;  but  here  were 
men  and  women  excited  by  unusual  hopes  and  fears, 
who  had  left  everything  else  in  this  world,  and  followed 
their  dear  master,  in  whom  they  had  the  never-flinching 
faith  that  he  would  introduce  the  new  world,  and  reign 
over  it  in  glory,  in  which  they  all  would  participate.  This 
beloved  friend  and  teacher  had  gone  they  knew  not 
whither.  Was  he  dead  ?  It  was  impossible.  Could  he 
have  died  a  common  death?  Then  he  must  have  been 
a  false  prophet,  and  was  justly  put  to  death.  It  was 
impossible.  Even  if  he  did  die,  he  would  rise  again  and 
fulfill  what  he  had  promised.  He  will  rise ;  perhaps  he 
is  risen  already.  The  thought  was  scarcely  conceived, 
when  the  excited  imagination  saw  the  resurrected 
Christ  Such  an  excitable  spirit  as  that  of  Mary  Mag- 
dalen had  to  see  him  first.  "  She  saw  him,"  was  spread 
abroad  among  the  disciples,  who  had  now  recovered  from 
their  first  fright  and  flight,  of  which  they  felt  somewhat 


88  THE    EARLY    CHRISTIANS. 

ashamed.  With  their  returning  confidence  and  trust, 
especially  as  they  had  to  redeem  their  reputation,  what 
was  more  natural  than  that  Jesus  should  soon  appear  to 
some  or  all  of  the  apostles,  and,  at  last,  to  a  multitude 
of  people  ?  Jesus  was  no  longer  a  false  prophet ;  he  was 
the  Messiah,  who  would  soon  come  again  with  the  new 
world,  "  when  the  last  will  be  the  first,  and  the  first 
last." 

Why  should  such  a  comforting  thought  be  given  up  ? 
To  remain  faithful  to  the  beloved  teacher  was  very 
pleasing  to  their  expectations.  They  soon  returned  to 
Jerusalem,  formed  a  congregation  of  the  saints,  who 
differed  from  the  other  Jews  in  nothing  except  the 
belief  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah,  and  as  such  would  soon 
return,  when  the  new  earth  and  the  new  heaven  would  be 
founded.  Of  his  doctrines  they  carried  out  as  much  as 
was  possible  to  be  carried  out  in  this  miserable  world ; 
but  the  distinguishing  points  were  too  insignificant  to 
make  them  appear  as  a  special  sect  of  the  Jews.  They 
would  undoubtedly  soon  have  relapsed  into  the  ranks  of 
the  other  Jews,  had  not  another  master-mind  taken 
hold  of  this  new  idea  of  the  resurrected  Messiah,  to  lead 
it  victoriously  to  the  conquest  of  the  world.  It  was 
Paul  who  founded  Christianity  ;  and  as  his  spirit  entire- 
ly overshadows  that  of  Jesus  in  the  system  of  Chris- 
tianity, we  cannot  conclude  without  giving  a  sketch  of 
this  remarkable  man. 

PAUL. 

The  actual  results  of  Jesus'  life  and  activity  were  very 
insignificant,  as  the  author  of  the  Acts  testifies  (i.  15), 
telling  us  that  the  adherents  of  Jesus  were  no  more  than 
120  ;  while  we  learn  from  Josephus,  Antiq.  (Book  xx.? 


89 

chap,  v.,  sec.  1 ;  chap,  viii.,  sec.  6),  that  other  prophets, 
who,  very  soon  after  Jesus,  agitated  the  people  by 
similar  promises,  had  thousands  of  enthusiastic  follow- 
ers. Under  the  leadership  of  the  more  prominent 
disciples  of  Jesus  this  little  band  of  the  faithful  formed 
a  small  congregation,  or  rather  community,  which  led  a 
quiet,  unostentatious,  communistic  life,  but  did  not  devi- 
ate in  the  least  from  the  laws  of  Moses  and  the  doctrines 
of  Judaism,  as  then  taught.  Their  communism,  intro- 
duced by  Jesus,  was  quite  sufficient  to  undermine  their 
future  existence,  for  it  led  to  poverty,  which,  with  the 
accompanying  faults  and  vices,  is  a  dry  rot,  that  will  sap 
the  strength  and  vigor  of  any  society  where  it  has  once 
set  in.  But,  besides,  they  were  occasionally  exposed  to 
the  petty  annoyances  and  persecutions  of  some  fanatics, 
who  made  them  suffer  for  their  slight  differences  those 
penalties  and  penances  which  the  church  discipline  had 
the  authority  to  inflict.  Among  these  fanatics  there 
was  none  more  zealous  than  a  certain  Saul. 

Saul  was  born  in  Tarsus,  in  Cilicia,  a  city  renowned 
for  Grecian  culture,  of  which  Saul,  however,  had  not 
even  a  smattering.  "When  quite  a  young  man,  he  came  to 
Jerusalem  to  receive  the  higher  theological  training,  and 
was  said  to  have  been  a  pupil  of  Gamaliel  the  elder. 
According  to  the  Jewish  customs  of  those  days,  his  theo- 
logical pursuits  did  not  relieve  him  from  the  obligation 
of  learning  a  trade  *,  he  was  a  tent-maker,  or  rather 
weaver  of  that  coarse  tent-cloth  called  cilicium.  In 
Jerusalem  he  soon  showed  his  inborn  fanaticism,  by 
seeking  distinction  in  the  persecution  of  the  harmless 
followers  of  Jesus,  who  were  called  Nazarenes.  By  his 
exertions  mainly  they  were  scattered  from  Jerusalem 
along  the  coast  of  Phoenicia,  Syria,  and  Cilicia.  But 


90  PAUL. 

Saul's  fanaticism  had  no  rest;  he  heard  that  those 
scattered  from  Jerusalem  were  gathering  in  the  Grecian 
cities,  and  he  obtained  letters  from  the  high  priest  to  the 
heads  of  the  various  synagogues,  by  which  he  was 
authorized  to  take  all  Nazarenes,  wherever  found,  and 
deliver  them  to  the  court  of  Jerusalem,  the  highest 
court  in  religious  matters.  With  these  letters  he  went 
to  Damascus,  but  before  he  entered  this  city  a  sudden 
change  came  over  him.  He  had  a  vision  of  the  cruci- 
fied Jesus,  and  henceforth  became  as  zealous  and  fan- 
atical in  the  propagation  of  the  new  doctrine  as  formerly 
he  was  in  its  persecution. 

Of  this  vision  the  Acts  give  us  three  contradictory 
versions  (ix.  3  ff. ;  xxii.  6  ff. ;  xxvi.  12  if.),  according  to 
which  a  light  from  heaven,  brighter  than  the  sun,  sud- 
denly shone  round  about  him,  and  a  conversation 
between  him  and  an  apparition  took  place.  The 
legendary  nature  of  these  relations  is  obvious ;  the  words 
of  Jesus,  in  one  relation,  are  put  into  the  mouth  of  Ana- 
nias in  the  other ;  here  the  companions  of  Paul  remain 
standing,  there  they  fall  to  the  ground ;  in  one  relation 
they  hear  the  voice,  but  see  nothing ;  in  the  other  they 
see  the  light,  but  hear  nothing.  His  own  version  of  this 
event  is  simple  enough  (Gal.  i.  12  ff.;  I.  Cor.  xv.  8  ;  ix.  1). 
He  saw  Jesus  just  as  all  the  other  apostles  had 
seen  him.  This  gives  us  a  clearer  idea  of  what  the 
apostles  have  seen,  and  what  the  apparitions  of  the 
resurrected  Jesus  were. 

Saul's  physical  constitution  was  very  weak  j  he  was 
continually  complaining  of  his  bodily  infirmities,  among 
which  there  must  have  been  one  especially  harassing, 
which  he  calls  "  the  thorn  in  his  flesh,  the  messenger  of 
Satan  that  buffets  him  "  (II.  Cor.  xii.  7).  It  was  nothing 


PAUt. 

but  the  fiery,  indomitable  spirit  within  him  that  could 
battle  against  so  many  hardships,  and  bear  such  fatigues 
as  he  imposed  upon  himself.  But  he  had  to  pay  the 
penalty  for  it ;  his  whole  nervous  system  was  deranged  ; 
he  was  subject  to  trances  and  hallucinations,  of  which  he 
often  speaks ;  for  instance  (II.  Cor.  xii.  2  ff.) :  "  I  knew  a 
man  in  Christ  above  fourteen  years  ago  (whether  in  the 
body,  I  cannot  tell ;  or  whether  out  of  the  body,  1  can- 
not tell :  God  knoweth).  How  that  he  was  caught  up 
into  Paradise,  and  heard  unspeakable  words,  which  it  is 
not  lawful  for  a  man  to  utter."  A  man  with  such  a 
constitution  and  disposition  had  traveled  for  eight  days 
from  Jerusalem,  through  the  desert,  and  now  approached 
the  surroundings  of  Damascus,  described  as  a  garden  of 
God  in  beauty.  There  his  cruel  labors  were  to  begin 
again.  His  mind,  all  the  way  along,  was  naturally 
occupied  with  his  victims,  the  followers  of  Jesus,  whom 
they  believed  to  be  the  Messiah.  Of  Jesus  he  knew 
no  more  than  he  had  learned  from  the  confessions 
and  ejaculations  of  those  he  had  persecuted.  He  had 
seen  the  joyful  suffering  of  those  who  persevered,  and 
heard  the  recantations  which  those  weaker  ones  had 
uttered  with  trembling  lips  and  agony  of  mind.  He  had 
probably  witnessed  similar  visions  of  some  of  his  victims, 
who,  in  the  midst  of  their  suffering,  were  so  carried  away 
by  their  ecstacy  and  wrought-up  imagination  that  they  saw 
the  heavens  open  and  the  resurrected  Christ  come  down 
with  the  clouds  of  the  sky,  as  the  Acts  (vii.  56)  tell  us  of 
Stephen.  Pondering  over  all  these  experiences,  his 
excited  brain,  wearied  nerves,  and  heated  imagination 
created  the  same  vision;  he  saw  the  crucified  Jesus  whom 
he  persecuted,  and  at  once  his  passionate  soul  was  thrown 
into  the  opposite  direction.  He  came  to  Damascus,  not 


92 

i 

as  a  new  man,  but  with  a  new  faith  and  new  convictions, 
for  which  he  would  do  battle  with  the  same  energy  and 
the  same  fiery  spirit  as  he  did  for  the  old. 

Without  conversing  with  any  of  the  apostles,  or  tak- 
ing advice  from  any  of  the  adherents  of  Jesus,  he  at 
once  entered  upon  his  new  career  of  preaching  the  Gos- 
pel of  the  resurrected  Christ,  as  he  understood  it,  accord- 
ing to  his  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  Jewish 
traditions.  That  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  and  his  disciples 
was  quite  different  from  his  own  was  nothing  to  him. 

The  disciples  of  Jesus  always  held,  as  did  Jesus  himself, 
that  the  most  faithful  compliance  with  the  laws  of  God, 
as  taught  by  Judaism,  were  the  only  preparation  for  the 
world  that  was  soon  to  come  by  some  wonderful  divine 
interposition ;  then  all  the  concomitant  circumstances 
that  were  to  accompany  the  time  of  the  Messiah,  accord- 
ing to  the  Jewish  traditions — as  for  instance,  the  conver- 
sion of  all  nations  to  the  true  belief  in  God — were 
likewise,  by  some  miraculous  powers,  to  be  brought 
about.  In  the  meantime,  Judaism  had  to  be  rigorously 
observed,  together  with  those  preparatory  doctrines 
divulged  by  Jesus.  But  Paul  was  not  the  man  to  go  for 
instruction  to  those  simple  fishermen;  he  was  not  to  be 
influenced  by  any  teacher.  Jesus  had  appeared  to 
him  just  as  he  had  appeared  to  others,  especially 
to  the  apostles;  he  had  his  revelations  and  visions, 
and  these  he  was  to  preach.  "  Jesus  is  the  Messiah ; 
lie  was  innocently  put  to  death ;  he  has  risen  again, 
and  will  soon  return  to  introduce  the  world  to  come." 
This  'was  all  he  knew  and  wanted  to  know  of  Jesus; 
and  it  was  quite  sufficient  for  him  to  found  a  new  reli- 
gion on  these  premises. 

Jesus  was  the  Messiah ;  then  everything  expected  of 


PAUL.  93 

the  Messiah  must  be  fulfilled.  The  Messiah,  according 
to  the  Jewish  traditions,  though  of  the  Jews,  was  to 
come  for  all  mankind;  the  whole  heathen  world,  there- 
fore, was  now  to  be  gathered  within  the  folds  of  the  new 
faith.  The  converted  Saul  could  only  become  an  apos> 
tie  of  the  heathen.* 

With  the  coming  of  the  Messiah  the  Holy  Spirit,  as 
promised  by  the  prophets,  was  to  pour  itself  upon  all 
flesh;  and  it  now  did  pour  itself  upon  all  those  who 
believed  in  Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  who  was  risen  from 
the  dead,  and  would  soon  reappear.  By  embracing  this 
belief  every  one  was  created  anew  and  stripped  of  his 
former  sinfulness. 

With  these  glad  tidings  he  addressed  himself  to  the 
Gentiles,  who,  after  the  appearance  of  the  Messiah,  were 
all  to  accept  the  Jewish  religious  and  moral  ideas. 
But  the  laws  and  institutions  historically  connected 
with,  and,  to  a  Jewish  mind,  inseparable  from,  these 
ideas,  had  no  meaning  to  the  heathen ;  they  were  a  yoke 
too  heavy  to  be  borne.  Paul,  brought  up  among  the 
heathen,  knew  this  better  than  anybody  else ;  and,  fortu- 
nately, according  to  the  theory  that  Jesus  was  the 
Messiah,  the  laws  were  superfluous.  Jewish  tradition 
had  it  that,  with  the  appearance  of  the  Messiah,  all  laws 
and  institutions  would  cease.  The  laws  and  institutions, 
therefore,  were  abolished,  and  there  was  no  hindrance  for 

*  For  the  ruling  thought  of  the  new  apostle,  it  is  very  significant 
that  henceforth  he  always  calls  himself  Paul ;  it  is  true,  it  was 
quite  customary  for  the  Jews  of  those  days  to  have  a  Roman 
name  beside  their  Jewish  one,  as  formerly  homophonous  Greek 
names  were  adopted  by  many  Jews  ;  in  this  case,  however,  the 
adoption  of  the  heathen  name  was  at  the  same  time  a  declaration 
of  hie  adoption  of  heathenism. 


94:  PAUL. 

receiving  the   Gentiles  into  the  bosom  of  the  new  faith 
without  burdening  them  with  the  laws. 

He  went  to  Damascus  (35  A.C.),  and  there,  to  the 
greatest  astonishment  of  all  who  had  heard  of  him  as 
the  bitterest  persecutor  of  the  new  sect,  he  preached,  to 
Jew  and  Gentile,  Christ  crucified.  For  three  years  he 
continued  his  work  in  Damascus  and  Arabia,  before  he 
went  to  Jerusalem  to  confer  with  the  original  apostles 
(38  A.G.)  But  his  self-willed,  combative  character  did 
not  allow  a  more  familiar  intercourse  with  the  congrega- 
tion of  the  saints.  With  Peter  and  James,  the  brother 
of  Jesus,  he  had  some  private  conversation,  but  saw 
none  of  the  others  (Gal  i.  18,  19).  The  atmosphere  in 
Jerusalem  did  not  suit  him,  and  after  two  weeks  he  left 
for  his  native  city,  Tarsus.  From  thence  he  was  soon 
called  by  Barnabas  to  Aiftioch,  where  the  corner  stone 
of  his  great  structure  was  to  be  laid.  Antioch,  after 
Rome  and  Alexandria,  was  the  largest  city  of  the 
Roman  empire.  Situated  as  it  was  on  the  boundary 
that  separated  the  European  from  the  Asiatic  world,  it 
became  the  conflux  of  the  most  various  nationalities,  the 
depository  of  all  the  vices  and  corruptions  prevalent  in 
both  Europe  and  Asia.  Since  the  time  of  Alexander 
almost  every  nation  of  these  two  parts  of  the  globe  had 
contributed  to  contaminate  the  very  air  which  Antiochian 
society  breathed ;  there  heathenism  appeared  in  its  most 
loathsome  immorality,  but  there  also  were  thousands  upon 
thousands  thirsting  and  longing  for  something  better.  A 
large  congregation  of  converted  Gentiles  was  formed  ;  and 
here,  for  the  first  time,  the  name  of  Christiani  was  (mock- 
ingly) given  to  the  adherents  of  Jesus  by  the  witty  Anti- 
ochians.  Antioch,  therefore,  was  the  real  cradle  of  Chris- 
tianity, a  name  soon  adopted  by  the  faithful  themselves. 


PAUL.  95 

But  in  Antioch  were  likewise  many  Jews  and  Jew- 
Christians,  who  maintained  an  active  correspondence 
with  the  mother  congregation  of  Jerusalem.  The  rumor 
of  what  Paul  and  Barnabas  were  doing  came  to  Jerusa- 
lem, and  there  were  soon  great  contentions  between  the 
Jew-Christians  and  the  Paulines,  i.e.,  the  converts  of 
Paul.  Paul  was  accused  of  teaching  another  gospel ; 
he  was  declared  a  heretic,  and  his  converts  were  told 
(Acts  xv.  1),  "  except  ye  be  circumcised  after  the  man- 
ner of  Moses,  ye  cannot  be  saved."  To  allay  these 
controversies,  Paul  went  with  Barnabas  and  Titus,  one 
of  his  converts,  to  Jerusalem  (52  A.C.)  After  long  dis- 
putes, a  compromise  was  agreed  upon  between  Paul  and 
the  original  apostles,  viz. :  Paul  should  be  received  and 
acknowledged  as  apostle  of  the  heathen,  who  might 
remain  free  of  the  law,  and  be  considered  "  proselytes 
of  the  gate " ;  the  disciples  of  Jesus,  however,  would 
continue  to  labor  as  apostles  of  the  Jews,  for  whom  the 
law  remained  valid  and  binding. 

Such  an  expedient  could  not  be  otherwise  than  very 
unsatisfactory.  It  was  soon  to  be  seen,  when,  shortly 
afterward,  Peter  came  to  Antioch,  and,  at  first,  lived 
and  ate  with  the  Gentiles ;  but  withdrew  as  soon  as  some 
of  James'  church  came  from  Jerusalem  and  remon- 
strated with  him.  This  example  of  Peter,  one  of  the 
chiefest  of  the  apostles,  naturally  influenced  many  of 
Paul's  converts,  as  even  Barnabas  had  followed  Peter. 
The  inconsistency  of  allowing  to  the  heathen  Christians 
what  was  prohibited  to  the  Jew-Christians,  and  the 
disadvantage  under  which  the  newly-founded  religion 
would  have  to  labor  by  maintaining  two  separate  camps 
within  her  pale,  were  plainly  to  be  seen.  It  was  impos- 
sible to  gather  all  the  heathen  into  her  folds,  as  long  as 


96  PAUL. 

the  Jew-Christians,  with  their  observance  of  the  law, 
remained  a  kind  of  aristocracy,  who  tolerated  the  large 
class  of  the  Gentiles  only  as  those  who  lagged  behind. 
Paul  now  took  a  very  decisive  step,  by  boldly  cutting 
loose  the  new  religion  from  its  parent  trunk  Judaism. 
He  declared  the  Jewish  law  to  be  not  only  superfluous 
and  obsolete,  but  a  hindrance  and  a  curse ;  the  observ- 
ance of  the  law  to  be  not  only  immaterial  and  unmerit- 
orious,  but  a  sin  against  the  Holy  Spirit  and  the  true 
belief  in  Christ. 

This  new  departure  he  had  to  justify  by  remodeling 
his  Christology,  which,  in  the  manner  of  those  days — to 
let  the  Scriptures  and  traditions  tell  whatever  the  inge- 
nuity of  the  expounder  wanted  to  prove — was  no  difficult 
task  for  a  man  of  Paul's  acuteness  in  combining  the 
remotest  ideas.  He  reasoned  thus :  Christ,  the  Messiah, 
has  died,  innocently  died ;  to  what  purpose?  Only  to 
take  away  the  sins  of  mankind.  He  is  the  lamb  of  whom 
Isaiah  (chap,  liii.)  speaks,  who  had  to  be  offered  for  the 
transgressions  of  the  world.  The  atoning  death  of 
Christ  took  away  our  sins,  which  our  own  obedience  to 
the  law  could  not  accomplish.  To  what  purpose,  then, 
was  the  law  given  ?  It  was  given  to  make  the  world, 
through  the  example  of  the  Jews,  conscious  of  their 
sins ;  it  was  the  continual  reminder  of  how  sinfully  man 
lives,  how  by  his  own  exertions  he  can  never  come  up  to 
what  God  demands  of  him ;  it  was,  therefore,  a  curse 
which  was  only  given  to  prepare  mankind  for  him,  who 
died  as  a  curse  (Gal.  iii.  13)  :  "  Christ  hath  redeemed  us 
from  the  curse  of  the  law,  being  made  a  curse  for  us ; 
for  it  is  written,  Cursed  is  every  one  that  hangeth  on 
a  tree" ;  through  him  perfect  righteousness  may  be 
acquired,  which  could  not  be  done  by  observing  the  law. 


PAUL.  97 

Now  the  Messiah  has  suffered  for  our  sins,  by  his 
death  we  may  obtain  righteousness,  when  we  become  cru- 
cified in  him  and  live  anew  in  him,  depending  solely  on 
this  grace  of  God,  through  the  sacrifice  of  his  Son.  But 
if  we  cling  to  the  old  law,  seeking  in  it  for  righteousness 
by  our  own  exertions,  even  after  the  death  of  Christ,  we 
deny  Christ  and  his  innocent  death  (Gal.  ii.  18  ff.) : 
"  For  if  I  build  again  the  things  which  L  destroyed  I 
make  myself  a  transgressor.  For  I,  through  the  law, 
am  dead  to  the  law,  that  I  might  live  unto  God.  I  am 
crucified  with  Christ ;  nevertheless  I  live  ;  yet  not  I,  but 
Christ  liveth  in  me ;  and  the  life  which  I  now  live  in  the 
flesh,  I  live  by  the  faith  of  the  Son  of  God,  who  loved 
me  and  gave  himself  for  me.  I  do  not  frustrate  the 
grace  of  God  :  for  if  righteousness  came  by  the  law,  then 
Christ  is  dead  in  vain."  The  breach  between  the  new  re- 
ligion and  the  old  was  now  complete.  According  to  this 
doctrine  it  was  no  longer  the  accomplished  hope  of 
Judaism,  but  a  new  religion,  of  necessity  hostile  to 
Judaism. 

Such  a  doctrine  was  too  repulsive  to  the  Jew-Chris- 
tians to  be  countenanced.  Paul  and  his  Gospel  are 
henceforth  most  intensely  abhorred  ;  he  is  represented  as 
Balaam,  the  seducer  of  the  people,  and  other  not  very 
flattering  epithets  are  given  to  him.  This  opposition 
among  the  Jew-Christians  he  has  to  explain  to  himself 
and  his  congregations;  the  easiest  way  of  explaining  it 
is,  "they  are  blinded,"  blinded  by  the  will  of  God;  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  election  (Rom.  xi.  7) :  "  What  then  ? 
Israel  hath  not  obtained  that  which  he  seeks  for ;  but  the 
election  hath  obtained  it,  and  the  rest  were  blinded." 
Thus  we  have  the  rejection  of  Israel  as  a  people,  and 
the  election  of  the  Gentiles,  as  many  of  them  as  will 


98  PAUL. 

believe ;  Christianity  has  abandoned  her  mother,  and 
thrown  herself  without  reserve  upon  the  heathen  world. 
Henceforth  her  language  is  no  longer  Hebrew  or  Chal- 
dean, no  longer  the  language  of  Jesus,  but  Greek  and 
Latin.  The  influence  of  heathenism,  the  consequence 
of  Paul's  doctrines,  may  be  resisted  yet  a  while  by 
the  handful  of  Jew-Christians ;  but  in  the  course  of  time 
they  will  have  to  yield.  Heathenism  more  and  more 
absorbs  the  new  religion  ;  and  those  truths  brought  over 
from  Judaism  are  soon  lost  sight  of,  for  they  are  swept 
away  or  buried  under  the  deluge  of  Paganism.  The 
new  religion  has  no  longer  anything  in  common  with 
Judaism,  except  whenever  she  takes  her  weapons,  as 
her  founder  Paul  always  did,  from  the  treasures  of  the 
sacred  literature  of  the  Jews,  to  turn  them  against 
those  who  furnished  them. 


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THE  CHIMST  OF 

Or,  THE  ENIGMAS  OP  CHRISTIANITY. 

St.  John   never  in   Asia  Minor.    Ireneus  the   Author  of  the  Fourtli  Gospel. 
The  Frauds  of  the  Churchmen  of  the  Second  Century  Exposed. 

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CONTENTS.— Chapter  I.  Death  of  Stephen.  Conversion  of  Paul.  His  retirement 
to  Arabia,  and  return  to  Damascus  and  Jerusalem. 

Chap.  II.  Paul  and  Barnabas  start  west  to  preach,  the  Gospel.  The  prevailing 
ideas  on  religion  in  Asia  Minor.  Theology  of  Plato  aud  Philo.  The  effect  pro- 
duced by  the  preaching  of  Paul.  Chap.  III.  Therapeutee  of  Philo,  and  Essenes  of 
Josephus.  An  account  of  them.  Their  disappearance  from  history,  and  what  be- 
came of  them.  Chap.  IV.  The  origin  of  the  Church.  Chap.  V.  Review  of 
the  past.  What  follows  in  the  future.  Chap.  VI.  How  the  Four  Gospels  originated. 

Chap.  VII.  John,  the  eon  of  Zebedee,  never  in  Asia  Minor.  John  the  Presbyter 
substituted.  The  work  of  Irenseus  and  Eusebius.  John  the  Disciple  has  served  to 
create  an  enigma  in  history.  John  of  Ephesus  a  myth. 

Chap.  VIII.  The  Gnostics.  Irenseus  makes  war  on  them.  His  mode  of  warfare. 
The  Apostolic  succession  and  the  object.  No  church  in  Rome  to  the  time  of  Adrian. 
Peter  never  in  Rome,  nor  Paul  in  Britain,  Gaul,  or  Spa'n.  Forgeries  of  Iremeus. 

Chap.  IX.  The  claim  of  Irenaeus,  that  Mark  was  the  interpreter  of  Peter,  and  Luke 
the  author  of  the  third  Gospel,  considered.  Luke  and  Mark  both  put  to  death  with 
Paul  in  Rome.  Chap.  X.  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  Schemes  to  exalt  Peter  at  the  ex- 
pense of  Paul.  Chap.  XI.  Matthew  the  author  of  the  only  genuine  Gospel.  Re- 
jected, because  it  did  not  contain  the  first  two  chapters  of  the  present  Greek  version. 

Chap.  XII.  The  character  of  Irenteus,  and  probable  time  of  his  birth.  His  partial- 
ity for  traditions.  The  claim  of  the  Gnostics  that  Christ  did  not  suffer,  the  origin  of 
the  fourth  Gospel.  Irenaeus  the  writer.  Chap.  XIH.  Why  Irenaeus  wrote  the  fourth 
Gospel  in  the  name  of  John.  He  shows  that  the  Gospels  could  not  be  less  than  four, 
and  proves  the  doctrine  of  the  incarnation  by  the  Old  Testament  and  the  Synoptics. 
The  author  of  the  Epistles  attributed  to  St.  John. 

Chap.  XIV.  Four  distinct  eras  in  Christianity  from  Paul  to  the  Council  of  Nice. 
The  Epistles  of  Paul  and  the  works  of  the  Fathers  changed  to  suit  each  era.  The 
dishonesty  of  the  times.  Chap.  XV.  The  Trinity,  or  fourth  period  of  Christianity. 

Chap.  XVI.  The  Catholic  Epistles. 

Chap.  XVH.  No  Christians  in  Rome  from  A.D.  66  to  A.D.  117.  Chap.  XVIII. 
The  office  of  Bishop  foreign  to  churches  established  by  Paul,  which  were  too  poor 
and  too  few  in  number  to  support  the  Order.  Third  chapter  of  the  second  Epistle 
to  Timothy,  and  the  one  to  Titus,  forgeries.  The  writings  of  the  Fathers  corrupted. 

Chfcp.  XIX.  Linus  never  Bishop  of  Rome.  Ciemeut,  third  Bishop,  and  his  successors 
to  the  time  of  Anicetus,  myths.  Chronology  of  Eusebius  exposed;  also  that  of  Irenaeus. 

Chap.  XX.  The  prophetic  period.  The  fourteenth  verse  of  the  seventh  chapter  of 
Isaiah  explained.  Chap.  XXI.  Bethlehem  the  birthplace  of  Christ,  as  foretold  by  the 
prophets.  Cyrus  the  deliverer  and  ruler  referred  to  by  Micah  the  prophet.  The  pas- 
sage from  the  Lamentations  of  Jeremiah  quoted  by  Matthew,  chap,  ii.,  verse  18, 
refers  to  the  Jews,  and  not  to  the  massacre  of  the  infants  by  Herod. 

Chap.  XXII.  Christ  and  John  the  Baptist.  Chap.  XXHI.  The  miracle  of  the 
Cloven  Tongues.  Misapplication  of  a  prophecy  oi  Joel. 

Chap.  XXIV.  Miracles.         Chap.  XXV.  Epistle  of  Paul  to  the  Hebrews. 

Chap.  XXVI.  The  controversy  between  Ptolemseus  and  Irense.is  as  to  the  length 
of  Christ's  ministry.  Christ  was  in  Jerusalem  but  once  after  he  began  to  preach, 
according  to  the  first  three  Gospels,  but  three  times  according  to  John.  If  the  state- 
ments made  in  the  first  three  are  true,  everything  stated  in  the  fourth  could  only  hap- 
pen after  the  death  of  Christ. 

Chap.  XXVII.  The  phase  assumed  by  Christianity  in  the  fourth  Gospel  demanded 
a  new  class  of  miracles  from  those  given  in  the  first  three.  A  labored  effort  in  this 
Gospel  to  sink  the  humanity  of  Christ.  His  address  to  Mary.  The  temptation  in  the 
wilderness  ignored,  and  the  last  supper  between  him  and  his  disciples  suppressed. 
Interview  between  Christ  and  the  women  and  men  of  Samaria.  A  labored  effort  to 
connect  Christ  with  Moses  exposed. 

Chap.  XXVIII.  The  first  two  chapters  of  Matthew  not  in  existence  during  the  time 
of  Paul  and  Apollos.  A  compromise  was  made  between  their  followers  at  the  Coun- 
cil of  Smyrna,  A.D.  107.  The  creed  of  the  Church  as  it  existed  at  that  day  deter- 
mined, and  how  Christ  was  m.;de  manifest.  Catholics  of  the  second  century  repu- 
diate this  creed  and  abuse  Paul.  Further  proof  that  Irenaeus  never  saw  Polycarp. 
Injuries  inflicted  upon  the  world  by  the  fourth  Gospel. 

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THE  CHRIST  OF  PAUL; 

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BT.  JOHN  NEVER  IN  ASIA  MINOR.     IREN^EUS  THE  AUTHOR  OF  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 
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Paul  was  a  thorough  Unitarian,  believing  and  preaching  every- 
where the  human  origin  of  Christ,  whose  pedigree  he  traces 
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presently  resound  through  the  civilized  world." 

CHARLES  P.  SOMERBY,  Publisher, 

J.39  EIGHTH  STREET,  NEW  FOJRX. 


Essence    of    Christianity.       By    L.    FEUERBA<  n. 

Translated  by  Geo.  Eliot.  Cloth,  Gold  Side  and  Back,  340  pp. 
Postpaid,  $3. 

The  Essence  of  Religion.     God  the  Image  of  Man. 

Man's  Dependence  upon  Nature  the  Last  and  only  Source  of 
Religion.  By  L.  FEUERBACH,  author  of  "  Essence  of  Christianity." 
12mo.  Postpaid,  Cloth,  75  cts. 

"  The  purpose  of  my  writing  is  to  make  men  a/jM;-0{x>logians  instead  of  theo- 
logians;  man-lovers  instead  of  God-lovers;  students  of  this  world  instead  of  candi- 
dates for  the  next;  self-reliant  citizena  of  the  earth  instead  of  subservient  and  wily 
ministers  of  a  celestial  and  terrestrial  monarchy/'—  Feuerbach. 

The   Antiquity   of  Christianity.     By  JOHN  AL- 

BERGER.     Postpaid,  Paper,  35  cts.;  Cloth,  75  cts. 

The  Divine  Origin  of  Christianity  Disproved  by  its  Early  History.  The  Confes- 
sions of  the  Church  Fathers  as  to  the  Paganism  of  their  Creed. 

The  Childhood  of  the  World.  A  Simple  Account 
of  Man  in  Early  Times.  By  EDWARD  CLODD,  F.R.A.S.  Postpaid 
Paper,  50  cts.;  Cloth,  75  cts. 

"  Information  not  popularly  accessible  elsewhere  an  to  the  life  of  Primitive 
Man  and  its  relation  to  our  own."—  E.  B.  Tylor,  F.R.A.S. 


The  Cultivation  of  Art,  and  its  1  Mat  inns  to 

gious  Puritanism  and  Money-getting.  By  A.  II.  COOPER.  Postpaid, 
Fancy  Paper,  25  cts.  ;  Flexible  Cloth,  50  cts. 

"It  is  not  religion,  but  religion's  parody,  theolocry,  which  arrays  its.-lf  in 
opposition  to  that  sincere  and  manifold  expression  of  human  impulse  and  power  to 
which  we  give  the  name  of  art."—  Extract. 

Religious  Positivism.     A  Brief  Exposition  of  the 

System  of  Worship,  of  Faith  and  of  Life  propounded  by  Auguste 
Comte.  "  Love  our  Principle,  Order  our  Basis,  Progress  our  End." 
By  H.  EDGER.  Postpaid,  Paper,  50  cts. 

The  Religion  of  Inhumanity.  A  Criticism.  By 
FREDERIC  HARRISON.  Postpaid,  20  cts.  "  A  caustic  criticism  on  a 
sort  of  new-fangled  Calvinism." 

Philosophy  of  Spiritualism,   and  the  Pathology 

and  Treatment  of  Mediomania.  By  F.  R.  MARVIN,  M.D.,  Professor 
of  Psychological  Medicine  and  Medical  Jurisprudence  in  the  New 
York  Free  Medical  College  for  Women.  Postpaid,  Cloth,  $1. 

"  There  is  no  way  of  getting  rid  of  Infidelity  till  some  way  is  devised  of  abol- 
ishing the  doctors.  And  here 


is  another  point:  he  says  the  special  indulgence  in 

regous  exercses  unermnes  the  fabric  of  morality  ____  So  the  poor  clergy  and  the 
religious  get  bethwacked  on  every  hand!  ____  Is  there  no  punishment  that  can  be 
properly  inflicted  on  a  physician  who  boldly  assails  theology  and  its  devotees  in  this 
relentless  manner?"—  Daily  Graphic. 

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